String bags are not the only 1980s relic that could help fight climate change

Who remembers cardboard boxes at the end of supermarket tills? Glass milk bottles? How about the bottle deposit scheme? We don’t need the tech of the future to make eco-friendly choices at home, says David Barnett. We can find everything we need in our not-so-distant past

The £1 reusable, washable string bags are designed so produce can be carried home ‘just like in the 1970s and ’80s’ (Getty/iStock)

When I was a kid at the turn of the 1980s, one of my most hated jobs was being sent to the fish and chip shop. Not, you understand, because I didn’t like fish and chips; rather because I would invariably be sent with a clanking nest of bowls and a tea towel. It was all right if anyone wanted just fish and chips, or pie and chips, because they were wrapped in newspaper – indeed, today’s news was tomorrow’s chip wrapping. But if there was any moistness attached to the order – gravy, or the Wigan delicacy of “pea-wet” (the juice from the simmering peas) – then a receptacle was required.

I think polystyrene trays had probably been introduced by then, and I would often bemoan the fact I had to hand our own dishes over the counter to be gently warmed before the food was put in them, wrapped in paper and then covered with our tea-towel for extra insulation. But my mother would never countenance a plastic tray… not, I don’t think, through any desire to save the planet, but because they cost an extra couple of pence.

I was given pause to think of this when hearing that Morrisons was introducing string bags for shoppers. Or should that be reintroducing? When I was young, no self-respecting nan would be seen out at the shops without a string bag. And for a bigger shop, produce would be placed directly into a wheeled shopping trolley.