Pay recycling costs, stores told. Not a chance.

The Local Government Association has obviously been reading The Carrier Bag Con, a good choice you'll no doubt agree. They think that supermarkets should pay for the recycling and disposal of their packaging, and that this will make the supermarkets cut back on their packaging. But they won't.

Why not? Because we, the consumer, won't let them. You see, we don't like bruised tomatoes. We don't like soggy paper bags full of vegetables. We like everything to be perfect and glossy and just like the pictures in Jamie's books. Actually that stuff might be glossy because of the spit thing. Anyway, we love our perfectly formed foodstuffs, and they just won't arrive like that from out of the back of the lorry without having all these layers of packaging. So the supermarkets will keep using the packaging, and they'll keep looking for other ways to be green. Like taking away our carrier bags.

Perhaps a compromise could be reached? Carrier bags in exchange for buying mis-shapen veg. Seems unlikely, to be fair.