It's such a beatuful country but I've never seen so many discarded plastic bottles. You can be in the middle of nowhere and you'll find some plastic bottles. It may be different now but it was quite shocking at the time.
Travelling makes you realise almost the whole world is like this... It's only in developed countries where we waste just as much (or more) but manage to tidy it away in one place slightly better.
A lot of it has to do with Europeans not having nearly as much space to go around as many of those other countries, i think. You can even see it in place in Europe that are bigger than the others, compared to places like Germany, where everything is ridiculously tidy and orderly - and also used to consist of hundreds of individual states all the size of a stamp.
That statistic is odd lol, makes it seem like it's roughly even between Africa and Asia, but actually Asia has 60% of the world's population, Africa 17%.
Edit, also I think you missed the joke; they were saying the West "tidies" all their rubbish into Asia and Africa, probably true.
>Edit, also I think you missed the joke; they were saying the West "tidies" all their rubbish into Asia and Africa, probably true.
Bingo. Export that man/woman a cookie.
I'm not justifying it, but the process is a mutually beneficial agreement. Though it wouldn't surprise me if at some point in the future we're required to compensate countries for having used them as a bin.
Oh right, I see.
I thought it was a comment on places in Africa and Asia, like when "whole world" he meant "but Africa and Asia are only two places". But I see now.
And it is true.. from exporting "recycling", old cars that don't meet emissions or safety standards, ships scrapped on beaches etc etc..
Yeah I just googled and it's literally enormous ships of literal household and commercial refuse. Apparently, China have started refusing to take it but idk that was just a headline I saw.
This is 100% correct and enrages me. The West basically uses Africa and Asia as a resource for whatever they need. And then as a dumping ground for whatever they don't need. It's sick. Talk about eating and regurgitating in the same place then leaving others to suffer the consequences.
I live up in Scotland and walked 7 miles up the hills in the opposite direction of civilisation the other week, plastic bottles and cans all along the way up.
My dog cut his paw thanks to broken bottles round Crummock. I love having a bevvy by one of the lakes as much as the next person but me and my mates tidy after ourselves, I just don’t understand the mentality of littering.
try going to saudi arabia. Its like a plastic water bottle orgy. its the default (and probably only?) way in which water is ever consumed. Including in households. Its wild. you see piles and piles of plastic water bottles at the sides of the roads in Ryihad
This is pretty crazy tbh. I lived in Indonesia for a while and people would use gallon bottles and pumps/dispensers for water. You would exchange your empty bottle for a full one when you were finished and the empty one would be sterilised and reused.
But then they would have used a different plastic bag in Kyrgyzstan. And put those ones in landfill.
Although why they didn't just sell them for 10p in Morrisons, I don't know.
I was going to say, most likely had shit loads of these in storage and then done a rebranding, which involved redesigning the logo on everything, so they sold the old ones off cheap.
Hi mate, this post is against the lighthearted and open nature of the sub.
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A few years ago I saw an old NHS patient transport bus at the border post between Zimbabwe and Botswana. It was scrap but nice to see in a weird way - it looked like it had lived a long and interesting life.
Where I am currently (Eastern Europe) the ambulance service wears red uniforms. There’s a little bit of variety- some have branded t shirts, jackets with reflector strips, etc, but people also add their own red items of clothing, like cardigans or trackies or whatever, and this seems to be tolerated fine.
All this to say that I recently saw an ambulance driver wearing a red Royal Mail polo shirt.
>All this to say that I recently saw an ambulance driver wearing a red Royal Mail polo shirt.
In Czech Rep they have these English Second Hand shops everywhere, there's not so much stigma attached to second hand clobber here, especially for kids. Before I knew this I remember drunkenly haranging a bloke once wearing an Everton polo saying they were shite, he didnt even know who they were, he got it in a second hand shop.
The Royal Mail sent their cast offs, the bone shaker bicycles to Namibia as well, remember riding one as a young postman and they were bad on our roads I would not fancy those on a dusty track.
it's the same in Poland - I see so many school uniforms and Brownies/Scouts uniforms in the second hand shops. I think the clothing comes from thoose charity bags you get through your letterbox here
Deffo, I saw a case in the news where a Polish fella was getting charged for making a few quid from clothes for Oxfam. There was an old guy in our village pub me and my old man were calling Brooks having not long wathced the Shawshank Redemption, he wears a Kent rugby club's tracksuit top.
They grade them and then they go to different places. There's big cultures in some African countries of buying the bags and reselling the bits that they can. A bit like those Amazon returns things.
Some of best are resold and the worst are made into all sorts of things, we used to get the cotton ones as rags when I worked in a lead moulding shop. It was fun opening a new bag and trying to work out where it came from. Once got one from Italy and it had a load of tourist tea towels from a village somewhere. I nearly nicked one that had an Italian joke on it.
That’s shit though, I put clothes in bags with the expectation someone gets it for free. Turns out my good will is just being used to spin a profit somewhere in Europe, great.
>All this to say that I recently saw an ambulance driver wearing a red Royal Mail polo shirt.
I don't know whether you've seen the new Postman Pat series but judging by the variety of vehicles the poor man is supposedly expected to drive now it wouldn't surprise me to see him driving an ambulance in Eastern Europe now and again.
I actually have, and the concept cracked me up. I was non specific about location in the original comment because everything Ukraine based tends to derail the conversation, but this particular postman pat and his black and white cat were fairly near the front line.
Which really just adds to what the producers are putting that poor man through…
When I lived in Indonesia I would see loads of tricked out ambulances with neon lights and logos, slogans etc all over them. Always seemed kinda off to me
I've told this story on here before, but I once saw my old school bus (local UK coach company, with the company name on the side) in the background of a news report being filmed about Taliban advances on Kabul.
Reminds me of the guy who sold his truck in America and next saw it in a video about ISIS still with his branding on it.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/us/texas-plumber-sues-car-dealer-after-his-truck-ends-up-on-syrias-front-lines.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/us/texas-plumber-sues-car-dealer-after-his-truck-ends-up-on-syrias-front-lines.html)
Not actually sure how so many people are surprised.
It's Extreme common for African nations and places within Middle east and Central Asia to have old cars.
It's actually the norm for old cars from Europe to get shipped there and resold. Hence why their emissions are also higher per car - as they are literally the old cars of Europe.
Here's me thinking that finding Morrisons branded porridge in McColls today was strange, a quick search told me that Morrisons own McColls, but I kind of doubt they own that Kyrgyzstan bazaar.
Ours is still branded McColls. A year or two ago it was a spar.
Except now the staff are in Morrisons uniforms, the products on the shelves are a mix of Morrisons, spar, safeway and mccolls, and there is randomly a post office in the middle of it.
It’s the trippiest shopping experience out there…
I’ve not seen a Spar in a while. My locals changed to One Stop.
Safeway delivers to the Morrison’s Daily, that used to be a McColls.
The other McColls near me just recently became Londis.
From my hasty google-fu, it turns out Safeway was bought by Morrisons two decades ago. They sold the brand to mccolls about four years ago after doing nothing with it, I think so mccolls can confuse everyone.
Now Morrisons has bought mccolls and hence ended up back with the Safeway brand, which mccolls had been using to confuse everyone, and the rollout of turning all the mccolls (and removing the brand) into Morrisons daily’s is taking longer than they expected.
So we have a mishmash of all these brands all under one roof. Fun times!
Yup and Tesco own One Stop. There's one round the corner from me and sometimes they stock Tesco sandwiches (and even their own branded sandwiches are just the Tesco ones in different packaging)
I think I can enlighten you as to why you would have seen the Morrison brand in McColls. A while back Morrisons did a deal with them to supply "Safeway" branded products, as Morrisons own the brand after buying Safeway's, to reduce costs all those Safeway products are sent from exactly the same distribution center the Morrisons stores are supplied by.
I saw the same Morrisons carrier bags in the grand bazaar in Urumqi about 10 years ago and I couldn’t believe it! They must have been doing the rounds in Central Asia for a really long time.
How weird, I just came here to make exactly the same comment!
Saw them all over Urumqi as well as Almaty. I just assumed there was a factory pumping them out somewhere in Central Asia.
We don't have these in Scotland. Paper bags 40p, woven bag 90p, better (!) Woven bag with 4 bottle holders £1.20, wine carriers (hold 6 bottles) The plastic bags are very rarely used, home delivery are those brown, American style, foldover brown paper bags- they're useless for anything other than your recycling.
Paper is fine for people who have cars, not so great for people who walk home with their shopping when it starts to rain or just rips because the contents weigh more than 5kg.
Very good point, I imagine it’s a pain too if you have any chilled items that start to condensate as they warm up and end up plopping out the bottom lol
OoOooh .. I wish to visit those Central Asia’ bazaars again. Sweetest fruits/ nuts on earth!!
And there are always “Korean salads” on sale somewhere. Little spicy side dishes that deported (by soviets) Koreans came up with using local produce.
Wow, I didn’t know about this 😮 I often saw «корейский салат» (Korean salad) on restaurant menus in Central Asia and wondered why, it all makes sense now
When I was in S.Korea was really surprised that I couldn’t find any of my favourites “He”( spicy raw fish) is my addiction . Resembles a bit more spicy saviche.
Should say that Central Asian Korean food is undiscovered (by most) gem. Interesting mix of flavours.
Yeah it’s called Koreiskaya Morkovka and we in Post-Soviet countries always have them on the table during holidays. It’s a version of Kimchi made with carrots that as far as I know mainland Koreans don’t really eat and was made because of the lack of ingredients
Off topic Fun fact : the "Grange hill theme tune" was written as a generic TV theme and kept on tape at the BBC to be used whenever. It was the 'Give us a clue' theme for a while before becoming forever associated with Grange Hill.
It's possible the Spanish supermarket chain found the music in some kind of stock music catalogue. I'd be very surprised if they knew about Grange Hill.
There's a chain in Austria that uses a bit of the M*A*S*H theme in their in store jingle. The bit that accompanies the lyrics "Suicide is painless."
I'd guess they're trying to steer people towards the Paracetamol except you can only get them in pharmacies over there.
I live in Algeria and the shop on our street has Tesco bags with the logo Tesco was using from the 90s on them. The Brits who live here all call that shop “little Tesco’s”
We went to a Tesco in Poland, it was tiny and very dingy and had hardly any tesco brand stuff in it, it was quite odd. I suppose it could have been another shop that opened in an old tescos building and didn't bother to change the logo
More surprising to find this in the European Union but fairly common around Africa - there’s loads of “7 Eleven” in Algeria that have nothing to do with actual 7 eleven apart from the store front logo
Yeah they go to places that are yet to give a shit about the environment they live in.
I work in another Stan, close by, and plastic bags a plenty, everywhere.
My mum lives in Hong Kong now and still uses old Morrison's bags that she brought over from the UK because they've started charging for plastic bags at the markets and she refuses to pay the 10 cents for a new one! 😅
I suspect it's probably the same for the lady in Singapore.
How does one visit Kyrgyzstan? I've always wanted to go visit some of the 'stans (the food and architecture looks amazing) but not got the first clue how to start the process.
Just checked you can fly next Saturday to Bishkek with Pegasus from Stansted via Istanbul for £264 return 😆(that’s much cheaper than usual)
Kyrgyzstan’s visa policy is pretty lax (60 days visa free for UK, EU, US, etc passports) but some other countries in Central Asia like Turkmenistan are very strict - I wanted to visit but they were still closed to foreigners when I planned my trip (they recently reopened)
Turkmenistan, sadly, is run by a pretty nutty dictator and is basically a Central Asian version of North Korea. Even if you do get in, you only get to see what they want you to see. It's a shame, it's a beautiful place with good people and a lovely culture, but visiting is nearly impossible.
They may have been manufactured out that way, at the time before 5p charge we used billions of these bags, an operation like Morrisons may have had stocks of 50 million as a minimum. Come a rebrand or the bag tax and they just pay for the stock to be dumped not moved to uk. The local market will take a much longer time to use these than the Morrison chain.
But what I find interesting is the use of plastic in these places when the green lobby are trying to outlaw it here
I dunno, it makes sense to me. We have the economic resources to reduce our impact on the planet here - just because there are places that can't, or don't care, shouldn't stop us trying to do our best here
Probably wouldn't trust it.. would you buy food from a plastic bag brand? You go in to buy your years supply of plastic bags but instead it's just a supermarket. I'd be miffed
I used to work at Asda with a girl who came from Kyrgyzstan, we worked on the chilled department and whenever we restocked the “GÜ” desserts she used to laugh and say “in my country this word means ‘shit’”.
I’ve never looked at those little brown pots the same since she told me.
There's an online article about where they may have come from.
https://medium.com/wandering-webb/the-mysterious-case-of-the-morrisons-bags-2a2ce4df32f1
They're actually mass produced in China still. You can find em in all different colours on AliExpress.
It seems like they decided to just keep using the same template even after Morrisons did not.
I also saw the exact same bags when I visited a bazaar in Kashgar a couple of years ago! That’s not too far from Kyrgyzstan so I wonder how many are out there
[The morrisons logo on these bags was changed in 1985.](https://1000logos.net/morrisons-logo/)
Those bags don't look 38+ years old to me, there's probably a factory still making them. Maybe they realised tourists will buy products just for a morrisons bag or the factory used to produce the bags for morrisons and decided to keep running the same design.
I am from one of ex-USSR countries, and we used to have Sainsbury's plastic bags in the same context. Absolutely no idea how they appeared there in such numbers, but they were absolutely everywhere. Every babushka selling wonky homegrown veg from her backyard seemed to have them.
Yellow / navy T-shirt bags, with a slogan "where good food costs less".
I was shocked to have discovered, after moving to the UK, that Sainsbury's actually exists and actually sells food.
Edit: googled out of interest, they are apparently available for sale even now, for example [here](https://epicentrk.ua/shop/mplc-paket-maika-sainsbury-300kh500-mm-250-sht-0529-1ebfff72-dd4f-6b4a-9a15-c325e46ba59f.html). No idea whether they are original stock, or the design proved popular.
They must have a massive stockpile of them. I was there in 2019 and noticed the same thing. I'm also sure I saw old truck trailers from random UK & European businesses being used.
Did you visit Uzbekistan also? Notice how every car on the road is a white Chevrolet/Daewoo? Apparently the govt setup a JV with them after the Soviet collapse, and it's just been a monopoly ever since. Crazy how the this part of the world works - but I absolutely love it.
All the clothing 'charity' collection stuff you get through the door seems to be a bit scammy.
Never looked into it but did read the label.
I would donate more if someone could point me in the right direction.
That’s awesome, Kyrgyzstan is a super underrated destination! I spent 5 days there as part of a 2 week guided tour in Central Asia, mostly hiking in some absolutely gorgeous places in the region around Issyk Kul lake (to name a few places - Barskoon Gorge, Fairy Tale Canyon, Jeti Oguz and Kok Jaiyk Valley). I didn’t spend much time in Bishkek, but it’s a nice and modern city and well worth checking out the bazaars. The photo in this post I took at Osh Bazaar which is one of the biggest in the country.
I’d say be prepared for the lacking infrastructure outside of Bishkek - getting to many places involves some extremely bumpy rides along unpaved roads. Toilets out in the countryside are pretty ramshackle to say the least - they’re often just a hole in the ground in a wooden/metal outhouse and sometimes the door has been partially or fully blown off by the wind 😅 so I would recommend carrying some toilet roll and hand sanitiser with you.
Like the other countries in Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan is a cash-based society. in Bishkek you’d be fine paying with card in a lot of places but you probably won’t have much luck outside. It would be helpful to bring euros/US dollars to exchange for soms (local currency), or withdraw from ATMs in Bishkek. I found that a lot of ATMs didn’t accept Mastercard particularly outside the capital city, which was a pain because I’d only brought my Monzo card 😅 so use Visa if you can :)
I left out many things but you can DM me and I can try to answer your questions!
There's insane lot to do!
Yurt camping, part of scenic Pamir Highway, Horse Riding & Visiting Issyk-Kul, one of the most beautiful lake of the world & very decent food for pennies.
I'm not surprised, while our small country is charged for bags, the rest of the entire world couldn't give 2 fucks and will double bag every time.
The cooperations don't give a fuck.
It’s a proper off the beaten path destination and a hard sell to most Westerners, as the tourist infrastructure is undeveloped (read: you’re driving across mostly unpaved roads outside of Bishkek and the major towns and shitting in flimsy metal outhouses in the countryside). But it’s a very unique place to visit if you can see past that.
I've been yearning to do Central Asia for a long time. Was thinking to start with Armenia (technically the Caucasus but in the same ball park) and maybe Uzbekistan or somewhere in that region.
But Kyrgyzstan is the real hipster choice. It's the "I only like their first album" of the 'stans. Hats off to you.
Can you do an entire post about it?
I also went to the Caucasus countries, (plus Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan), but nothing else was really relevant to the CasualUK sub if you catch my drift 😁 but I’d be happy to answer your questions via DM
Morrisons had to get rid of them somehow, as no doubt had a massive stock when the laws changed, especially with the view to go no plastic in the future.
Glad didn't go straight to landfill and are being put to use. Probably sold them cheap to other countries. Would like to think they donated them but with corporate greed I doubt it, but can hope!
Reminds me of the story of the Derby City Council wheelie bins ending up in Bulgaria:
(Sorry, terrible website) https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/derby-news/brown-bin-derby-bulgaria-1727951
I'm glad they're actually being used and not just going to the landfill, I always wondered where they'd all gone when they stopped them and started doing bags for life. Imagine what weird and wonderful places others have turned up in
You know what, I'm actually kinda glad they're being used instead of going straight into a landfill Before they go into a landfill in Kyrgyzstan.
It's such a beatuful country but I've never seen so many discarded plastic bottles. You can be in the middle of nowhere and you'll find some plastic bottles. It may be different now but it was quite shocking at the time.
Travelling makes you realise almost the whole world is like this... It's only in developed countries where we waste just as much (or more) but manage to tidy it away in one place slightly better.
A lot of it has to do with Europeans not having nearly as much space to go around as many of those other countries, i think. You can even see it in place in Europe that are bigger than the others, compared to places like Germany, where everything is ridiculously tidy and orderly - and also used to consist of hundreds of individual states all the size of a stamp.
Asia and Africa are two places.
Two places that happen to contain 77% (and growing) of the worlds population
That statistic is odd lol, makes it seem like it's roughly even between Africa and Asia, but actually Asia has 60% of the world's population, Africa 17%. Edit, also I think you missed the joke; they were saying the West "tidies" all their rubbish into Asia and Africa, probably true.
>Edit, also I think you missed the joke; they were saying the West "tidies" all their rubbish into Asia and Africa, probably true. Bingo. Export that man/woman a cookie. I'm not justifying it, but the process is a mutually beneficial agreement. Though it wouldn't surprise me if at some point in the future we're required to compensate countries for having used them as a bin.
Oh right, I see. I thought it was a comment on places in Africa and Asia, like when "whole world" he meant "but Africa and Asia are only two places". But I see now. And it is true.. from exporting "recycling", old cars that don't meet emissions or safety standards, ships scrapped on beaches etc etc..
Yeah I just googled and it's literally enormous ships of literal household and commercial refuse. Apparently, China have started refusing to take it but idk that was just a headline I saw.
This is 100% correct and enrages me. The West basically uses Africa and Asia as a resource for whatever they need. And then as a dumping ground for whatever they don't need. It's sick. Talk about eating and regurgitating in the same place then leaving others to suffer the consequences.
You can find the in the UK. Wanna go to to the top of Bowfell in the Lake District? You will find lots of discarded plastic and even glass.
I live up in Scotland and walked 7 miles up the hills in the opposite direction of civilisation the other week, plastic bottles and cans all along the way up.
My dog cut his paw thanks to broken bottles round Crummock. I love having a bevvy by one of the lakes as much as the next person but me and my mates tidy after ourselves, I just don’t understand the mentality of littering.
try going to saudi arabia. Its like a plastic water bottle orgy. its the default (and probably only?) way in which water is ever consumed. Including in households. Its wild. you see piles and piles of plastic water bottles at the sides of the roads in Ryihad
This is pretty crazy tbh. I lived in Indonesia for a while and people would use gallon bottles and pumps/dispensers for water. You would exchange your empty bottle for a full one when you were finished and the empty one would be sterilised and reused.
Beaches in Bali were absolutely full of plastic bottles and fishing nets.
It will be different now, it’ll be much worse.
Just like England.
Mate the UK used to be like that not that long ago. You only notice the difference when you step outside your door.
Better in a British landfill than a Kyrgyz river honestly
But then they would have used a different plastic bag in Kyrgyzstan. And put those ones in landfill. Although why they didn't just sell them for 10p in Morrisons, I don't know.
They probably were sent to landfill and got picked up along the way
Nah. They'll have just been sold to somewhere that wants them.
I was going to say, most likely had shit loads of these in storage and then done a rebranding, which involved redesigning the logo on everything, so they sold the old ones off cheap.
Yeah Or they got sold off when supermarkets got rid of plastic bags
I did think that, but by the time single use carrier bags were banned this logo had been scrapped long ago.
I dunt know mate I'm not a Morrisons logo historian haha.
More likely they had a rebrand or they needed getting rid of after they moved over to bags for life. They could be given away or sold off cheap.
[удалено]
this is CasualUK not CasualXenophobia
Lol, seems my sarcasm was taken too literally lol
Or just a bizarre comment to make about a country that is really very beautiful.
That means your sarcasm wasn’t sarcastic enough.
[удалено]
Hi mate, this post is against the lighthearted and open nature of the sub. Rule 2: Don't be Aggressive | Pointlessly Argumentative | Creepy We're here for people to have fun in. If you're just here to start a stupid reddit slap fight you're in the wrong place. We have a zero tolerance rule in place for racism or hate speech. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot us a modmail.
Very grown up
A few years ago I saw an old NHS patient transport bus at the border post between Zimbabwe and Botswana. It was scrap but nice to see in a weird way - it looked like it had lived a long and interesting life.
Where I am currently (Eastern Europe) the ambulance service wears red uniforms. There’s a little bit of variety- some have branded t shirts, jackets with reflector strips, etc, but people also add their own red items of clothing, like cardigans or trackies or whatever, and this seems to be tolerated fine. All this to say that I recently saw an ambulance driver wearing a red Royal Mail polo shirt.
>All this to say that I recently saw an ambulance driver wearing a red Royal Mail polo shirt. In Czech Rep they have these English Second Hand shops everywhere, there's not so much stigma attached to second hand clobber here, especially for kids. Before I knew this I remember drunkenly haranging a bloke once wearing an Everton polo saying they were shite, he didnt even know who they were, he got it in a second hand shop. The Royal Mail sent their cast offs, the bone shaker bicycles to Namibia as well, remember riding one as a young postman and they were bad on our roads I would not fancy those on a dusty track.
it's the same in Poland - I see so many school uniforms and Brownies/Scouts uniforms in the second hand shops. I think the clothing comes from thoose charity bags you get through your letterbox here
Deffo, I saw a case in the news where a Polish fella was getting charged for making a few quid from clothes for Oxfam. There was an old guy in our village pub me and my old man were calling Brooks having not long wathced the Shawshank Redemption, he wears a Kent rugby club's tracksuit top.
They grade them and then they go to different places. There's big cultures in some African countries of buying the bags and reselling the bits that they can. A bit like those Amazon returns things. Some of best are resold and the worst are made into all sorts of things, we used to get the cotton ones as rags when I worked in a lead moulding shop. It was fun opening a new bag and trying to work out where it came from. Once got one from Italy and it had a load of tourist tea towels from a village somewhere. I nearly nicked one that had an Italian joke on it.
That’s shit though, I put clothes in bags with the expectation someone gets it for free. Turns out my good will is just being used to spin a profit somewhere in Europe, great.
>All this to say that I recently saw an ambulance driver wearing a red Royal Mail polo shirt. I don't know whether you've seen the new Postman Pat series but judging by the variety of vehicles the poor man is supposedly expected to drive now it wouldn't surprise me to see him driving an ambulance in Eastern Europe now and again.
I actually have, and the concept cracked me up. I was non specific about location in the original comment because everything Ukraine based tends to derail the conversation, but this particular postman pat and his black and white cat were fairly near the front line. Which really just adds to what the producers are putting that poor man through…
When I lived in Indonesia I would see loads of tricked out ambulances with neon lights and logos, slogans etc all over them. Always seemed kinda off to me
I've told this story on here before, but I once saw my old school bus (local UK coach company, with the company name on the side) in the background of a news report being filmed about Taliban advances on Kabul.
Reminds me of the guy who sold his truck in America and next saw it in a video about ISIS still with his branding on it. [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/us/texas-plumber-sues-car-dealer-after-his-truck-ends-up-on-syrias-front-lines.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/us/texas-plumber-sues-car-dealer-after-his-truck-ends-up-on-syrias-front-lines.html)
Do you think the driver shouted at them if he saw any hands reach up to adjust the vents?
"If you lot don't keep it down back there we'll be going straight back to school and there won't be any Jihad for anybody!"
Not actually sure how so many people are surprised. It's Extreme common for African nations and places within Middle east and Central Asia to have old cars. It's actually the norm for old cars from Europe to get shipped there and resold. Hence why their emissions are also higher per car - as they are literally the old cars of Europe.
I’ve seen a retired ambulance that was used on a horse farm, the reflective pattern was removed and it was used to transport gear
Horse farms are notorious for smuggling cocaine.
TIL
Nice to see them not going to waste and still being used
Here's me thinking that finding Morrisons branded porridge in McColls today was strange, a quick search told me that Morrisons own McColls, but I kind of doubt they own that Kyrgyzstan bazaar.
My local mccolls changed to a Morrisons Daily last year.
That must be exhausting and so pointless, no wonder they stopped
Took me a minute 😂
Take my upvote
Yeah, Morrison's bought McColls after they went into administration, my local just closed to officially rebrand itself recently
Ours is still branded McColls. A year or two ago it was a spar. Except now the staff are in Morrisons uniforms, the products on the shelves are a mix of Morrisons, spar, safeway and mccolls, and there is randomly a post office in the middle of it. It’s the trippiest shopping experience out there…
I’ve not seen a Spar in a while. My locals changed to One Stop. Safeway delivers to the Morrison’s Daily, that used to be a McColls. The other McColls near me just recently became Londis.
From my hasty google-fu, it turns out Safeway was bought by Morrisons two decades ago. They sold the brand to mccolls about four years ago after doing nothing with it, I think so mccolls can confuse everyone. Now Morrisons has bought mccolls and hence ended up back with the Safeway brand, which mccolls had been using to confuse everyone, and the rollout of turning all the mccolls (and removing the brand) into Morrisons daily’s is taking longer than they expected. So we have a mishmash of all these brands all under one roof. Fun times!
Only found out a little while ago that One Stop is owned by Tesco.
The bags were probably manufactured out there and were sold as surplus when the design changed.
Yup and Tesco own One Stop. There's one round the corner from me and sometimes they stock Tesco sandwiches (and even their own branded sandwiches are just the Tesco ones in different packaging)
I think I can enlighten you as to why you would have seen the Morrison brand in McColls. A while back Morrisons did a deal with them to supply "Safeway" branded products, as Morrisons own the brand after buying Safeway's, to reduce costs all those Safeway products are sent from exactly the same distribution center the Morrisons stores are supplied by.
That's true as well as McColls filing for bankruptcy in 2022 and Morrisons agreeing a buyout deal
My local onestop sells tesco bread all the time.
How bazaar.
Ooh baby, it's making me crazy, every time I look around...
It’s in my face…
How you spend your free time with a belt and plastic bag is entirely your affair.
This song was by New Zealand band OMC, not Australian singer Michael Hutchence.
How bazaar.
A freshly pasted poster reveals a smile from the past
[удалено]
are you having a giraffe
I saw the same Morrisons carrier bags in the grand bazaar in Urumqi about 10 years ago and I couldn’t believe it! They must have been doing the rounds in Central Asia for a really long time.
How weird, I just came here to make exactly the same comment! Saw them all over Urumqi as well as Almaty. I just assumed there was a factory pumping them out somewhere in Central Asia.
They must be old stock. I say that because printing on plastic bags is hard and adds extra expense .
Must be. Probably left over from when single use bags were banned in UK supermarkets and now you can only get a bag for life.
I doubt it, that’s a really cool old Morrisons logo, not used since 2007, so weird how’s its still out there
Probably got sold off in bulk on the cheap back when the logo changed if they were still in the warehouses
Good points. Much more likely than what I suggested.
They’ve still not ran out after 15 years which is mad to be fair
You don’t only have to get a bag for life, there’s biodegradable single bags too (the green ones that stink of bbq hulahoops lol)
I never knew! Will look out for them.
We don't have these in Scotland. Paper bags 40p, woven bag 90p, better (!) Woven bag with 4 bottle holders £1.20, wine carriers (hold 6 bottles) The plastic bags are very rarely used, home delivery are those brown, American style, foldover brown paper bags- they're useless for anything other than your recycling.
Oh interesting! Paper is the way👌 wish we had more recyclable bags too
Paper is fine for people who have cars, not so great for people who walk home with their shopping when it starts to rain or just rips because the contents weigh more than 5kg.
Very good point, I imagine it’s a pain too if you have any chilled items that start to condensate as they warm up and end up plopping out the bottom lol
Ditto - about 10 years ago I saw them in Kyrgyzstan too!
More reasons to shop in Kyrgyzstan Seriously though, I like the idea there not being wasted
That's why Mums gone to Kyrgyzstan
That's Arpa price _pat pat_
>there
Eww, I just noticed. I'm an English teacher who has switched off for Summer. Sorry! I also spelled English wrong when typing this soooooo....
OoOooh .. I wish to visit those Central Asia’ bazaars again. Sweetest fruits/ nuts on earth!! And there are always “Korean salads” on sale somewhere. Little spicy side dishes that deported (by soviets) Koreans came up with using local produce.
Wow, I didn’t know about this 😮 I often saw «корейский салат» (Korean salad) on restaurant menus in Central Asia and wondered why, it all makes sense now
When I was in S.Korea was really surprised that I couldn’t find any of my favourites “He”( spicy raw fish) is my addiction . Resembles a bit more spicy saviche. Should say that Central Asian Korean food is undiscovered (by most) gem. Interesting mix of flavours.
Yeah it’s called Koreiskaya Morkovka and we in Post-Soviet countries always have them on the table during holidays. It’s a version of Kimchi made with carrots that as far as I know mainland Koreans don’t really eat and was made because of the lack of ingredients
Slightly off topic, but there was a supermarket chain in Spain that used the Grange Hill theme tune as their instore jingle..
Off topic Fun fact : the "Grange hill theme tune" was written as a generic TV theme and kept on tape at the BBC to be used whenever. It was the 'Give us a clue' theme for a while before becoming forever associated with Grange Hill. It's possible the Spanish supermarket chain found the music in some kind of stock music catalogue. I'd be very surprised if they knew about Grange Hill.
yep I doubt they knew of it, it was really weird to hear in that setting.
There's a chain in Austria that uses a bit of the M*A*S*H theme in their in store jingle. The bit that accompanies the lyrics "Suicide is painless." I'd guess they're trying to steer people towards the Paracetamol except you can only get them in pharmacies over there.
I live in Algeria and the shop on our street has Tesco bags with the logo Tesco was using from the 90s on them. The Brits who live here all call that shop “little Tesco’s”
We went to a Tesco in Poland, it was tiny and very dingy and had hardly any tesco brand stuff in it, it was quite odd. I suppose it could have been another shop that opened in an old tescos building and didn't bother to change the logo
More surprising to find this in the European Union but fairly common around Africa - there’s loads of “7 Eleven” in Algeria that have nothing to do with actual 7 eleven apart from the store front logo
This is so wholesome to me!
And there we go... an insight to the nefarious world of international plastic bag smuggling.
I guess they had to go somewhere when they changed their logo, or they stopped using those style bags.
Yeah they go to places that are yet to give a shit about the environment they live in. I work in another Stan, close by, and plastic bags a plenty, everywhere.
Better they go somewhere to be used, rather than just put straight into landfill.
Tell me you’re not from the UK without telling me you’re not from the UK.
I’m in the uk and have no idea what you’re trying to infer
Or even imply
A few years ago, I saw a lady walking through a street in Singapore with the same style bag. Remember thinking it was weird back then.
My mum lives in Hong Kong now and still uses old Morrison's bags that she brought over from the UK because they've started charging for plastic bags at the markets and she refuses to pay the 10 cents for a new one! 😅 I suspect it's probably the same for the lady in Singapore.
we lived in hk as kids and had a load of posh bags from various fancy shops that we brought back and kept for years and years.
How does one visit Kyrgyzstan? I've always wanted to go visit some of the 'stans (the food and architecture looks amazing) but not got the first clue how to start the process.
Just checked you can fly next Saturday to Bishkek with Pegasus from Stansted via Istanbul for £264 return 😆(that’s much cheaper than usual) Kyrgyzstan’s visa policy is pretty lax (60 days visa free for UK, EU, US, etc passports) but some other countries in Central Asia like Turkmenistan are very strict - I wanted to visit but they were still closed to foreigners when I planned my trip (they recently reopened)
Wow, that's way cheaper than I expected! Thanks, personal travel agent :) I'm going to do some deeper digging.
No worries! Check out [Caravanistan](https://caravanistan.com) - I found it to be pretty useful 😄
That site's amazing - thanks for the tip!
Turkmenistan, sadly, is run by a pretty nutty dictator and is basically a Central Asian version of North Korea. Even if you do get in, you only get to see what they want you to see. It's a shame, it's a beautiful place with good people and a lovely culture, but visiting is nearly impossible.
They have them in Kazakhstan too
What about Pakistan and Uzbekistan? Tajikistan? Rajasthan? Morristans.
Very nice, I like!
They may have been manufactured out that way, at the time before 5p charge we used billions of these bags, an operation like Morrisons may have had stocks of 50 million as a minimum. Come a rebrand or the bag tax and they just pay for the stock to be dumped not moved to uk. The local market will take a much longer time to use these than the Morrison chain. But what I find interesting is the use of plastic in these places when the green lobby are trying to outlaw it here
I dunno, it makes sense to me. We have the economic resources to reduce our impact on the planet here - just because there are places that can't, or don't care, shouldn't stop us trying to do our best here
Well, if somebody ***Did start*** Morrisons in there, he'd have instantly free ads in many bazaars and even bags to start off with...
Probably wouldn't trust it.. would you buy food from a plastic bag brand? You go in to buy your years supply of plastic bags but instead it's just a supermarket. I'd be miffed
I'd ask to buy one just to confuse the Morrisons staff
"I'll have a pound of the giant jelly beans, please."
when i was in spain i kept seeing tesco brand tape used to board off sections of tourist places
Those bags last forever, still come across them whenever I see people at the tip or clearing out an old shed etc
I used to work at Asda with a girl who came from Kyrgyzstan, we worked on the chilled department and whenever we restocked the “GÜ” desserts she used to laugh and say “in my country this word means ‘shit’”. I’ve never looked at those little brown pots the same since she told me.
There's an online article about where they may have come from. https://medium.com/wandering-webb/the-mysterious-case-of-the-morrisons-bags-2a2ce4df32f1
If the only old carrier bags we see in third world countries are Morrisons, presumably the other supermarkets dumped them all in landfills.
Top quality bag to carry your football boots in.
They're actually mass produced in China still. You can find em in all different colours on AliExpress. It seems like they decided to just keep using the same template even after Morrisons did not.
This is plastic "recycling" in a nutshell. Ship it to elsewhere and let them deal with it.
i was Kyrgyzstan in 2017 and they had those bags, must have a lot to get through!
I also saw the exact same bags when I visited a bazaar in Kashgar a couple of years ago! That’s not too far from Kyrgyzstan so I wonder how many are out there
Well. Where did everyone expect the millions of branded plastic bags to go when we banned them...
[The morrisons logo on these bags was changed in 1985.](https://1000logos.net/morrisons-logo/) Those bags don't look 38+ years old to me, there's probably a factory still making them. Maybe they realised tourists will buy products just for a morrisons bag or the factory used to produce the bags for morrisons and decided to keep running the same design.
I once saw a Tesco trolley and plumber's van from Devon in the West Bank
Apparently that logo was last used in 2007 so that bag is at least 15 years old
Right you bastards. I didn't want to do this, but as nobody else has someone has to. #How Bizarre
I am from one of ex-USSR countries, and we used to have Sainsbury's plastic bags in the same context. Absolutely no idea how they appeared there in such numbers, but they were absolutely everywhere. Every babushka selling wonky homegrown veg from her backyard seemed to have them. Yellow / navy T-shirt bags, with a slogan "where good food costs less". I was shocked to have discovered, after moving to the UK, that Sainsbury's actually exists and actually sells food. Edit: googled out of interest, they are apparently available for sale even now, for example [here](https://epicentrk.ua/shop/mplc-paket-maika-sainsbury-300kh500-mm-250-sht-0529-1ebfff72-dd4f-6b4a-9a15-c325e46ba59f.html). No idea whether they are original stock, or the design proved popular.
They must have a massive stockpile of them. I was there in 2019 and noticed the same thing. I'm also sure I saw old truck trailers from random UK & European businesses being used. Did you visit Uzbekistan also? Notice how every car on the road is a white Chevrolet/Daewoo? Apparently the govt setup a JV with them after the Soviet collapse, and it's just been a monopoly ever since. Crazy how the this part of the world works - but I absolutely love it.
I can hear that logo
All the clothing 'charity' collection stuff you get through the door seems to be a bit scammy. Never looked into it but did read the label. I would donate more if someone could point me in the right direction.
Oooh i am at this moment in time planning a trip to Kyrgyzstan. Please tell me everything?!
That’s awesome, Kyrgyzstan is a super underrated destination! I spent 5 days there as part of a 2 week guided tour in Central Asia, mostly hiking in some absolutely gorgeous places in the region around Issyk Kul lake (to name a few places - Barskoon Gorge, Fairy Tale Canyon, Jeti Oguz and Kok Jaiyk Valley). I didn’t spend much time in Bishkek, but it’s a nice and modern city and well worth checking out the bazaars. The photo in this post I took at Osh Bazaar which is one of the biggest in the country. I’d say be prepared for the lacking infrastructure outside of Bishkek - getting to many places involves some extremely bumpy rides along unpaved roads. Toilets out in the countryside are pretty ramshackle to say the least - they’re often just a hole in the ground in a wooden/metal outhouse and sometimes the door has been partially or fully blown off by the wind 😅 so I would recommend carrying some toilet roll and hand sanitiser with you. Like the other countries in Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan is a cash-based society. in Bishkek you’d be fine paying with card in a lot of places but you probably won’t have much luck outside. It would be helpful to bring euros/US dollars to exchange for soms (local currency), or withdraw from ATMs in Bishkek. I found that a lot of ATMs didn’t accept Mastercard particularly outside the capital city, which was a pain because I’d only brought my Monzo card 😅 so use Visa if you can :) I left out many things but you can DM me and I can try to answer your questions!
I bet they don't charge 60p
How come you decided to visit Kyrgyzstan?
There's insane lot to do! Yurt camping, part of scenic Pamir Highway, Horse Riding & Visiting Issyk-Kul, one of the most beautiful lake of the world & very decent food for pennies.
I'm not surprised, while our small country is charged for bags, the rest of the entire world couldn't give 2 fucks and will double bag every time. The cooperations don't give a fuck.
What do you suppose a better use of carrier bags produced prior to 2007 would be? Once you’ve manufactured them, surely better that someone uses them…
Not the entire world, there’s countries that charged for carrier bags long before the uk did and a load have banned or partially banned them.
Bless your tiny heart
Firstly and in my humble opinion more importantly….What the Fuck was you doing in Kyrgyzstan???
why not? 😄 it’s a beautiful country for hiking and the semi-nomadic culture practiced in the countryside is really interesting
I do love a bit of culture tbf and I have seen many places, but Kyrgyzstan isn’t to high up on my list of places to visit.
It’s a proper off the beaten path destination and a hard sell to most Westerners, as the tourist infrastructure is undeveloped (read: you’re driving across mostly unpaved roads outside of Bishkek and the major towns and shitting in flimsy metal outhouses in the countryside). But it’s a very unique place to visit if you can see past that.
I've been yearning to do Central Asia for a long time. Was thinking to start with Armenia (technically the Caucasus but in the same ball park) and maybe Uzbekistan or somewhere in that region. But Kyrgyzstan is the real hipster choice. It's the "I only like their first album" of the 'stans. Hats off to you. Can you do an entire post about it?
I also went to the Caucasus countries, (plus Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan), but nothing else was really relevant to the CasualUK sub if you catch my drift 😁 but I’d be happy to answer your questions via DM
I went to Afghanistan 4 times so shitting in a flimsy metal out house is a piece of Cake 🤣🤣….
Free carrier bags dude!
Start of a new empire
Morrisons had to get rid of them somehow, as no doubt had a massive stock when the laws changed, especially with the view to go no plastic in the future. Glad didn't go straight to landfill and are being put to use. Probably sold them cheap to other countries. Would like to think they donated them but with corporate greed I doubt it, but can hope!
I have an old, white Morrisons carrier bag. Mint condition, collectors item! £10 posted!
Thinking about it I don't even remember Morrisons rebranding it just happened in the background
Reminds me of the story of the Derby City Council wheelie bins ending up in Bulgaria: (Sorry, terrible website) https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/derby-news/brown-bin-derby-bulgaria-1727951
i was Kyrgyzstan in 2017 and they had those bags, must have a lot to get through!
Oh wow I forgot they used to look like that
I'm glad they're actually being used and not just going to the landfill, I always wondered where they'd all gone when they stopped them and started doing bags for life. Imagine what weird and wonderful places others have turned up in
Is this the equivalent of my can of coke from the burger shop in town being covered in Arabic?
Oh, so that’s where all my bin liners have gone 😂
Awwww I love Kyrgyzstan! Really miss their glory Beshbarmak noodle I hope I can find this in London :(
This has unlocked a memory that was stored deep in my 2KBs of memory. I did prefer the white coloured ones.
I love a vintage carrier bag
Seeing that old logo makes me think of my Grandad. When he was alive we used to go for a Morrisons breakfast every weekend.
Bet they got paid for moving on their old rubbish as well as getting paid by us to foot their environmental burden
I miss the old style morrisons
Recycling at its best!
Megatrip_george?
Job lot!!
We had to get rid of them somewhere 🤷♂️ boratt probably dropped them off