With everyone so environmentally aware these days, it is now big business for the Supermarkets and other shops to sell reusable shopping bags in a bid to reduce the number of plastic bags that are being dumped every year. I’m all for this - ok they’re making money on the bags that they’re selling, but some of them are pretty good quality, large enough to get quite a lot of your shopping packed up and even quite durable. And they’re saving money in the long run if they don’t have to produce so many carrier bags. So they’re saving money which obviously makes them happy, but we’re doing our bit too, by being more conscious of recycling and protecting the world we live in. My problem is that these same stores sell products which have a ridiculous amount of packaging. I know that this is the responsibility of the manufacturers of such products, but if the Supermarket giants claim to be so hot on environmental issues it is something that they should be considering. I use a particular body cream that I will cite as an example. I bought a bottle the other day, but I got so much more. Not only was the cream in a bottle, it was then in a box, then in an outer sleeve and then wrapped in cellophane! What did I do when I got home? Well, I peeled off the cellophane, took the outer cardboard sleeve off, took it out of the box and put it with the rest of my toiletries. All this redundant packaging then went in the bin. I know we can all be suckers for some fancy packaging, but is this really necessary? I would have been quite happy to pay the same amount of money to take the bottle straight from the shelf. So, this is something we need to be aware of - sure we might be doing our bit by taking our carrier bags back to the supermarket, but are we really making any difference if we then fill them full of over-packaged products?