Utopia, you are standing in it!

The 40 PAKnSAVE supermarkets on the North Island charge for plastic bags which you pack for yourself. The 100 New World supermarkets owned by Foodstuffs on the North Island do not charge for plastic bags and the bags are packed for you. The reason is supply and demand that takes account of the full price of groceries including the time cost of shopping and the incomes of their respective customers.

My New World supermarket is just down the road for me – I can see it from my window as I type. The nearest PAKnSAVE is a short drive to a slightly rougher part of town. The PAKnSAVE supermarkets are warehouse style supermarkets rather than a shopping experience made as pleasant as possible and convenient to where you live. PAKnSAVE supermarkets are much larger supermarkets required to be a hub for a number of suburbs rather than one or two.

The type of people who shop at PAKnSAVE are people that the New Zealand Greens pretend to be concerned about. PAKnSAVE customers are lower income people sensitive to prices, willing to go to the trouble of recycling bags.

5p for a plastic bag?
I'm all for a nice little earner, but this is a bleedin' liberty!
#Minder http://t.co/BvfLnjsVy8—
Arthur Daley (@DaleyArfur) October 08, 2015

As you expect under capitalism and freedom, a supermarket chain emerged through market competition to service that more price sensitive niche. The New World supermarket caters more for people in a hurry rather than people on a budget. People on a budget go to PAKnSAVE.

Monday's Daily Mail front page:
Plastic bags chaos looms
#tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers http://t.co/iHHLunYyow—
Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) October 04, 2015

The customers of New World supermarkets are nice members of the middle class who are much more likely to vote Green. They are busy people who do not have the time to keep their bags for next time, much less pack them for themselves. That is before we discuss how unhygienic the recycling of plastic bags is.

Typical of your middle-class Green disposed voter, they are cheapies in a small way as well. When my local supermarket started charging for plastic bags, they quickly dropped the idea because of hostile customer reactions.

The charges are nominal but the people on budgets particularly low income people struggling to with the budget, every cent counts. Naturally the New Zealand Greens are quite dismissive of the cost to shoppers of paying for bags because hardly any of their voters are on a budget.

Typical of the nanny state attitude of the New Zealand Greens, they are happy to compel people to pay for plastic bags and not compensate them for the loss even when they are on low incomes. Do the New Zealand Greens believe plastic bags should be free for low income families?

This same New Zealand Greens pretend to care about poor people who cannot afford to feed their children breakfast, but are happy to make the poor pay for plastic bags.

Let the market sorted it out. There are already supermarkets are charge for plastic bags. Most do not because their customer is uninterested in wasting time paying or bringing their own bags.

I well remember wanting to get time back on my deathbed as we waited behind some arrogant young Green who was packing his own bag after paying for his goods so he kept us waiting for a minute or two.

That is another reason why middle-class supermarkets pack your bags for you. They get you out of the supermarket and away from the lines at the checkouts faster if they pack the bags for you rather than let you do it in a more leisurely pace or perhaps after you have paid.

Again, this is a case about entrepreneurial alertness in the organisation of supermarkets. When your customers are time sensitive, the supermarket does things for them because the supermarket staff can do it faster than they do as they chat to each other and deal with their children.