Mike Hosking: Counter-intuitive Countdown's fantastic plastic 15-cent bags

Congratulations to Countdown, they have produced the finest plastic bag I have seen in quite some time.

And I would regard myself as somewhat of an expert in plastic bags, I'm a big plastic bag user, as indeed are the kids for school lunches.

Now these are big robust things - twice the size of the old bags, good sturdy handles, and look fit for purpose for many a journey or task.

Having laid eyes on my first bag and little short of squealing with delight, I was then informed by my wife that it was these very bags that were causing quite the fuss on Instagram or "Insta." Among that lot there is consternation and anger over what they see as a classic case of green-washing.

Now these, if you're not up with the story, are the bags that are available to those of us who don't always use recyclables.

Countdown have made a number of their supermarkets free of "single-use" plastic bags.
Well at least free plastic bag free - the alternative is their new robust number for 15 cents each.

Now let me tell you for 15 cents it's a bargain, in fact I'd rather pay 15 cents and get quality, than pay nothing and get crap.

And in that, it might be either an unintended consequence or possibly, as the angry of social media are charging, a touch of green washing.

Green washing by the way is where a company claims green credentials, but in fact their claims are either false, so their products aren't as green as they say, or they end up making money out of being green and using the environment to generate the income.

So in this case they get to say "Yay, we're plastic bag free and saving the Earth" - while at the same time pocketing new money from new bags.

Now what I assume they would argue is that at 15 cents people will get sick of paying and eventually all drag their reusable bags to the supermarket.

What I say is that may or may not happen. Because what I know to be the truth, rightly or wrongly, is that people tend to place convenience over a lot of other things.

That's why we still drive cars even though cars are ludicrously expensive compared with a bike or a bus. A car suits our purposes the same way a plastic bag does.

And not just a bag, a new souped-up, twice the size, twice the life rock star bag.

The battle of course is between the environmentalists who are rabid about this stuff, and the rest of us who are keen to help, but not to the extent we want to wear sack, cloth, and plough fields with donkeys.

And business has to navigate this politically correct world by trying to be a lot of things to a lot of people.

So these are the formative years, and in the meantime I will be taking my 15 cent bag and loving every minute with it - and happy to keep paying for them.