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Number of plastic bags found on UK beaches down 80% since charge introduced
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2024
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I'm still amazed how money is so important that even an unsubstantial amount can prompt a change in behavior. It isn't even the money itself, but more the thought of something costing money that prompts the change.
I first noticed this around covid times. Where I live you have to put money in shopping trollies to get them. When you neatly slot in the trolly where it is supposed to go, you get your money back. It's only 50 cents, so not a big deal. And because it's so normal most people have a suitable coin sized keychain. In most cases if you go into the shop and ask, they will give you a branded keychain for free.
With covid this was deemed a health risk, as people fudging about with the mechanism isn't very hygienic. Plus the shops were required to clean the carts after every use, and the mechanism was hard to clean. So they disabled the coin mechanism and set out a worker to give people cleaned carts and receive used carts to clean. As restrictions lifted, people had to clean their own carts and as time went on less and less people bothered.
So in the end the situation was as it had always been, but the coin mechanism was still disabled. In no time we saw American scenes with trollies being left all over the place, abandoned in the middle of parking lots etc. It made me so angry, how can people be so inconsiderate? Covid made me angry about selfish people a lot. At one point I saw someone give their trolly a shove on the parking lot, almost directly into my bicycle. I shouted at him and he just called me a removed and drove off.
As soon as all the restrictions lifted almost all places went back to the coin mechanism. These days depending on which shop and which location, some have the coin mechanism disabled again. Not sure why, maybe as a convenience to the customers. Mostly people put them back properly however, even in places where during covid people didn't. Maybe because the world is more normal, people are less selfish? Not sure.
My world kinda broke when I realized 50 cents was all that stood between people being decent and people being selfish assholes.