It’s not often that Tesco make me angry. If anything, my sometimes seemingly nightly jaunts to the Temple of ExceSsive COnsumerism fill me with glee – like a modern day Brewster (as in Millions, not Jeeves &) I seem able to find with anything my heart desires or necessity dictates I possess.

They sell clothes. They sell books. They sell DVDs. They sell XBox games, two flavours of Linux magazine, and Writing Magazine. They have a half decent stationary section. They develop my photos and allow me to partake in the state mandated tax on hope that is the National Lottery. They have even thoughtfully given over a portion of their floor space to food and drink (sneaky!).

But yesterday, there was something that they didn’t have. Something I needed that Tesco could not provide.

Not A Plastic Bag. No shit Sherlock.

They had no carrier bags.

Or, at least, that’s what they told me. Because I suspect something more, something sinister. I suspect that Tesco are up to something, and I suspect the other shops are up to it as well.

I believe I have uncovered the tyrannical conspiracy of Bags for Life.

So, time to blow the theory.

True Fact #1: Shops are not making you pay for carrier bags to help you.

The approximate cost of a standard carrier bag is £0.005. Therefore, when the shop charges you £0.05 for a bag, it is making a profit of 1000%. A healthy margin, in anyone’s money.

Considering that, as a nation, we consume around 216 carriers each every year, that amounts to around an extra £10 that you personally will hand over.

Using even the population of the UK in 2001, that comes to a grand total of £520,420,000. That’s half a billion pounds. Not quite enough to bail out a bank, but doesn’t it beg the question of what a real environment group could do with that sort of money?

All this, of course, is for something that used to be free with any purchase. Plastic bags are not completely free (I would defy anyone to walk into a supermarket and walk about 200 bags gratis), but their cost is factoring into the running cost of the store.

So, if I buy five items some proportion of the price of those items is not profit for the store or the original cost of the item to the store, but the overhead the store incurs to pay for the operations that enable me to buy it – the cashier, the till, the lights, the heating.

And, a bag to put it all in. Unless, of course, you buy a “Bag for Life”.

True Fact #2: Plastic Bags are already extremely durable, in fact, isn’t that kind of the problem?

Scientists estimate that plastic bags take between 400 to 1,000 years to decay. That’’s not all though – a typical bag comprised of high density polyethylene can hold 22lbs of shopping, some can even hold double this amount. So, it’s strong, durable, and will outlive me.

And yet, this isn’t a bag for life?

The problem that the supermarkets tell us that they are trying to solve is the country’s landfill sites filling up with indestrucible super bags. Their solution to this is to build a bag even more long lasting, even stronger, even more durable and then to sell it to us.

If you give me a plastic bag today and I look after it, care for it, and don’t abuse it any unnatural way, it appears that there is every chance that I will be able to pass that plastic bag down to my as yet unborn children for them to use.

Of course, the logical response to this is … “But you’re not going to look after that bag … are you?”

And that, is what is wrong with bags for life.

(Almost) True Fact #3: People are, generally, a bit rubbish

I’ve got lots of bags for life. They hang on doors. They are in the boot of my car. They are in my laptop case. Unlike The Organised People, however, I never seem to have one when I need one.

So, when I get to the till and realise that I need bags, I now have to ask for them. This in itself would not be a major obstacle if the supermarkets hadn’t, at some mysteriously appointed hour that was possibly under a full moon, trained all of their staff to look at you as if you had just confessed to child murder whenever you ask for a bag.

All I want to do is put the stuff I am about to pay for in a bag so that I can take it home. Like a child with a garden full of the graves of dead pets, I prommmise … I’ll look after this one.

And that is the terrfiying thing. What if there are more people like me than there are Organised People? What if, rather than saving the planet by eliminating the “threat” of plastic bags, we had unleased a far more dangerous plague – mountains of Bags of Life, discarded by the likes of me, to clutter up the lives of the Organised People?

I wonder if, some day soon, I will stand at the counter and ask for a Bag for Life only to receive the same look of disdain currently reserved for the Baglass People like me, and perhaps be reminded that “they last forever, you know …”

Or at least, for life. Which, according to scientists, is going to need to be more than 400 years for me to get my money’s worth of even one of these bags.

Rant Disclaimer: Chris is not an eco-terrorist, eco-vandal, or any other eco-negative stereotype. He drives a hybrid car and is kind to animals, especially monkeys. He just doesn’t like being taken for a ride.