Penistone Carry-A-Bag

Shopper Surveys - bag count

On Saturday 9th August and Thursday 21st August members of Penistone Carry-A-Bag surveyed the types of bags carried by shoppers. The same survey had been done on Thursday 31st January and Saturday 9th February. For a total time of 2 hours, shoppers were counted passing Cherrydale on the High St. We tried not to include the same person more than once, even if they passed by again.

	Jan/Feb	August
Total number of shoppers	528	529
Number of plastic bags carried by the above shoppers	700	630
Number of shoppers carrying only plastic bags	267	107
Number of plastic bags carried by the above shoppers	403	138
Number of shoppers carrying only cloth bags, rucksacks and trolleys	159	273
Number of cloth bags, rucksacks and trolleys carried by the above shoppers	174	313
Number of shoppers carrying both cloth bags and plastic bags	33	33
Number of cloth bags carried by the above shoppers	45	35
Number of plastic bags carried by the above shoppers	43	44
Number of shoppers carrying one or two items of shopping but no bag (or small paper bag)	25	30
Number of shoppers carrying re-used plastic bags or Bags for Life	32	86
Number of bags carried by the above shoppers	35	100

Shopper surveys - support

In January, we also stopped shoppers in Penistone town centre to ask them: 'Would you support a plan to reduce the number of plastic carrier bags used in Penistone?' We recorded their age and sex.

There were 130 people surveyed on Saturday 9th February. The results were:

91.5% of people supported moves to reduce plastic carrier bags
5.4% did not support it
3.1% had no opinion or were unsure

A few notes:

We had less people under 45 than we should have had - only 33 out of 130. This could have been because less young people shop in Penistone - a lot will go into bigger towns like Barnsley or Sheffield.
6 out of 7 people not supporting the plan were male
6 out of 7 people not supporting the plan were over 45
Half of the people with no opinion were male and half were female

We were very pleased at this high level of support for Penistone Carry-A-Bag.