Surviving the plastic bag donnybrook

Teary shoppers had forgotten or perhaps they had remembered and should have forgotten. It’s hard to say. We can’t be sure anymore. On Wednesday, Coles lifted their ban on single use plastic bags and within 24 hours restored it.

Where it could lead today is anybody’s guess. Perhaps we’ll be asked to roll barrels to the shops, leading to a brief boon for struggling coopers before the supermarkets change their minds again.

Just yesterday I observed a shopper decline the offer of free plastic bags to pack what looked like the proceeds of a shopping list for the looming apocalypse.

The woman piled her fare bagless into her trolley, leaving it loaded to the gunwales to the point where a major industrial accident was in the offing. She weaved her trolley crazily from the check-out to the car park. As it transpired the journey was the easy bit. She hurled her goods into the back of her SUV, one by one, only to see many of them roll out and crash to the floor.

It was like watching a bad juggler in action. There was milk, eggs, Tim Tams, Dettol, toothpaste, talcum powder and something called Primal Strips Vegan Jerky hitting the deck. Ironically, the paper towel stoically remained in the back of the car.

I was going to offer my assistance, but the shopper had that look of a person who, once her shopping was secured, would commence scanning the horizon for the nearest clock tower, so I thought it politic to leave her be.

Why Coles executives changed their minds and then changed them again is anybody’s guess.

I do have one theory. Perhaps Coles had engaged in a marketing exercise of the 1985 New Coke variety. The marketing brouhaha never made it to our shores, but it involved placing a new version of Coke on the market with the threat, old Coke, the one consumers had enjoyed for nearly a century, would be phased out.

I was in the US at the time and virtually anywhere I went resonated to the sound of people sampling Coca-Cola’s New Coke. Almost invariably consumers were left grimacing and gasping as though they’d stood in line for their beverages at Jonestown.

For a couple of months, Coca-Cola’s share price veered up and down and around and around. Executives were in a state of panic. Some went to rehab. Others took the company pistol and were never seen again. Finally, the company acknowledged what pretty much everyone else already knew. New Coke tasted like a sugary form of strychnine. It was never going to fly.

New Coke got old and old Coke was new again.

The decision to drop New Coke was said to be an embarrassing backflip for the Atlanta-based soft drink giant. While it has never been openly acknowledged, Coca-Cola had engaged in an elaborate stunt. When the dust settled, and soft drink order was restored, Coca Cola had increased its market share. Take that, Pepsi.

Was Coles’ marketing gymnastics serendipitous or calculated? Remember, one man’s gibbering paranoia is another’s heightened state of awareness. What we can safely say is, in the marketing world the Wildian rule applies: “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

I have genuinely enjoyed the single-use plastic bag donnybrook in recent weeks. It is testament to this nation’s can-do-but-probably-won’t-and-besides-there’s-something-good-on-the-telly-so-can-you-please-go-away attitude.

It’s difficult to avoid the notion that we are being played New Coke style. Prior to the bans, I was in the habit of finding a second application for single-use plastic bags, namely inserting them in the kitchen tidy as bin liners.

Now I know I probably couldn’t get a patent up on this invention. I think one or two Australians might have thought of it first. And like me, these people no doubt have found they now have to buy actual bin liners and use them at approximately the same rate. I doubt what’s happening here is reducing the petrochemical-intense plastics manufacturing process or even saving ocean fauna to the point where we could end up hip-deep in turtles at some vague point in the future. But what do I know? I’m just a consumer.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the argument, one amusing proposition is that reusing plastic or cloth bags at the check-out could lead to a mass outbreak of some disgusting disease. Hepatitis. Malaria. Hook worm parasites. Necrosis and buboes. Bring out your dead. I’m not so worried about encephalitis. To be honest, I could do with a lie down.

Have these people ever been out the back of a supermarket? The ones I’ve seen are filth-encrusted disgraces. Bacteria the size of small cars. A clumsy storeman could drop a couple of hundredweight of Roma tomatoes on the deck. The five second rule not only applies, it’s been stretched to a neat two hours.

Give those toms a wash before you pop them on a sandwich and they’ll come up trumps.

Of course, it’s entirely possible Australians don’t like being told what to do and where the forgetful or the intransigent are concerned, they must endure a levy on their goods just so the supermarkets can pretend they care.

Banning unpleasant things is plain dumb. It sets an ugly totalitarian tone for governments and corporations alike. Government responsibility should begin and end at giving people genuine fact-based information and then sitting back and allowing them to make informed choices.

After that we’ll let governments know when we need them. Don’t call us et cetera etc.

This article was first ;published in The Australian on 3 August 2018