Protesting plastic bag charge, Turks shop with donkey, wheelbarrow

Protesting plastic bag charge, Turks shop with donkey, wheelbarrow

ISTANBUL
Protesting plastic bag charge, Turks shop with donkey, wheelbarrow

Turkish citizens have come up with novel ways to protest the newly-adopted extra charges for plastic bags, entering supermarkets with donkeys and wheelbarrows. 

In the Central Anatolian province of Niğde, a man and a woman rode a donkey into a supermarket and calmly left with it after loading what they shopped.

As a separate incident, the 37-year-old Arif Arifoğlu in the eastern province of Erzurum shared footage on his social media accounts showing him riding a wheelbarrow in a supermarket for the same purpose.

Protesting plastic bag charge, Turks shop with donkey, wheelbarrow

Under a new government regulation introduced on Jan. 1, grocery stores in Turkey are obligated to charge customers 25 kuruş — 0.25 Turkish Liras — for a single plastic bag.

If authorities determine that a store is giving plastic bags to customers free of charge, the store will be fined 10 Turkish Liras ($1.85) per each square meter of their property.

Some people simply switched to classic string bags for multiple use, while others decided to protest the new charge by posting tongue-in-cheek videos online.

In one video, a woman was seen sewing her old plastic bags to repair them.

String bags back in fashion in Turkey amid plastic bag charge
String bags back in fashion in Turkey amid plastic bag charge

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