I've been using carrier bags made of canvas for the last year and a half with no problems. If they get soiled I just throw them in the washing machine with the rest of my stuff. I do keep a large heavy plastic bag inside one of them for frozen and meat items just in case and if some thing leaks I just wash it out or put it in the washer with the others. No real danger if you keep them reasonably clean.

If you want to keep your perishable foods separate you could try my method: I collect a few extra plastic food bags from the dispenser in the fruit and veg area first and then use them to add extra protection around meat/frozen food or anything else as required.

Of course, if you don't use plastic bags to put rubbish in wheelie bins, Gordon will make sure you are punished. So you have to buy plastic rubbish sacks if you can't get supermarket bags. Another money making scheme that does nothing for the environment?

British supermarket bags are naff anyway - they've got holes in. Is this because it's only the British who are stupid enough to put them over their heads? France has just about stopped using supermarket bags altogether, so I use the veg bags. Spain is much more sensible - business as usual.

Yes we now do this. Trouble is they're too small and have holes in. Irony is that Morrisons still have the proper plastic bags at the tills, and if you ask they will wrap the food. Some months back I remember complimenting a new cashier on properly wrapping raw meat. She replied that it was part of the training that they were made aware of the Food Hygiene Act!

Obviously, as usual, the need to increase profits has now overcome that.

As someone elsewhere has pointed out, supermarket carrier bag use may well have been dramatically cut, but sales of higher profit margin bin liners has similarly increased!

It seems a misplaced and very draconian measure to stop using carrier bags. They can be recycled in many ways :
Bin liners,
Charity Shops goods,
Organic farm goods,
muddy boots,
....

Of course that relies on us not re-using bags that have contained raw meat - oh but that should be separately wrapped anyway. So total re-use.

Richard

My mother still washes out plastic bags used for holding items, such as meat, cheese etc. in her fridge. Given the cheapness of these plastic bags, usually the ones the supermarket have put the meat in in the first place, I just wish she would stop doing it. She washes them out in the washing up water and then pegs them up to dry, ready for re-use. However, she never gets food poisoning.

Supermarkets even mix the cooked and uncooked meets in bags, when they deliver. Cooked and uncooked should be kept separate if they go by the Health and Hygiene Laws.

V

I've never had a problem with Tesco - in fact it's quite a tussle sometimes getting teh food out of the packaging at all!

As most meat sold in butchers shops has been dead for a couple of weeks or more, a few more hours isn't going to upset it, and its going to be cooked anyway. I was just telling my son about my old biology master. In his house they had a stewpot on the corner of the stove, and at the end of each meal they chucked what was left in the stewpot. Once a week they boiled it to get rid of the mould on the top. Whenever anyone came in from the cold, they'd have a nice hot plate of stew. They never got ill.

John

I asked an American restaurant once what the expression "fresh steaks" meant. I was told they were "freshly killed and hung for 21 days".... idiots.

Words I hate in English supermarkets:

Mild (Ugh!!)
Fresh
Farm
Home cooked
Natural

I have never washed any glass items before throwing them in the bottle bank, I am not wasting my hot water.
I still can not understand why they do not collect tins and aluminium cans any more, what a waste.