No more plastic bags?
Environment Minister Peter Garrett announced last week that the federal government wants to phase out plastic bags by the end of this year, either through a ban or a levy (putting a price on them). I’m not sure if this just includes supermarket bags, or ones from all shops.
Aussies used 3.92 billion plastic bags in 2005, down from 6 billion in 2002 - this drop has been caused by the promotion of re-useable bags as an alternative. Most of them end up in landfill, but at least 50 million still end up as litter each year.
What’s wrong with plastic bags?
- They’re stupidly ugly
- they take at least 20 years to break down in landfill
- the littered plastic bags can kill sea mammals who accidentally eat them
- we’re given them for free, but the cost is just added into the overheads of shops then passed on to us via increased prices
- 8.7 plastic checkout bags contain enough embodied petroleum energy to drive a car 1 kilometre - is this the best use of a limited resource?
- and apparently there’s a giant floating mass of them in the Pacific Ocean, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, swirled together by the currents (I’ll give a block of organic, fair-trade chocolate as a prize to anyone who can find me a picture of it!).
And yet we’re using them for just a few minutes before throwing them out! Estimates are that only 19% of plastic bags actually get re-used before being thrown out, and only 3% get recycled through supermarket collection.
Some people object to government regulation being used to solve a consumer problem. But if we wait for retailers to decide for themselves to phase them out, I think we’ll be waiting a very long time! We already know they’re wasteful and cause problems - why don’t we just get on with fixing the problem? Surveys show that 87% of Aussies are concerned about the problem of plastic bags, so this seems like an easy win to me.
Other people wonder what they’ll do for bin liners once the plastic shopping bags are gone - won’t we just end up buying plastic bin liners? I can’t speak for everyone, but we buy bin liners and the number we use is far outweighed by the number of shopping bags we’re given when we forget to bring our green reusable bags to the shops. There are biodegradable bin liners available too - they’re not perfect, but they’re better than plastic. And if you compost and recycle properly, there’s a lot less waste to dispose of anyway. Another suggestion I’ve heard is to line your bin with newspaper, but we use the internet instead of buying newspapers as we think they’re a waste of both paper and money 
Personally, I think phasing them out is a good idea. I don’t mind a ban, but putting a price on them would also work by making people think about whether they really need one or not.
If such different places as Ireland (90% reduction in 5 months using a 15c tax), San Francisco (banned after a voluntary scheme for retailers failed), and Taiwan (3c charge per bag, and a fine for places giving them away for free) can all cope without plastic bags, surely we can figure it out without too much fuss. 13 Australian towns have already phased out plastic bags so it’s easy to imagine the rest of us doing it too.
Planet Ark is actively campaigning against plastic bags, and has a bunch of handy resources you can use, including Frequently Asked Questions about plastic bags and Find out where to recycle your plastic bags.
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:39 am
That is always my question… I use plastic bags as bin liners! If they phase out plastic bags, I will have to BUY plastic bags as bin liners.
I thought the bags the shops gave out were biodegradable these days? They were at one point, did they phase that out? Or is that what takes 20 years to break down?
January 22nd, 2008 at 8:43 am
I got ‘Degradable’ bin liners from Coles, whatever that means. I’m still using the plastic bags I get when I just pop in somewhere for a few bits and don’t have the re-usable bags with me. Another benefit of the degradable bin liners is that they hold more waste than the shopping bags, so you don’t have to change your bin as often.
January 22nd, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Nikki - the bags you normally get from the shops are photodegradable. That means they’ll break into smaller pieces if exposed to light - the problem is that landfill doesn’t get enough light, and even the smaller pieces can still cause problems for wildlife and hang around for a very long time. You can get biodegradable bin liners, though - I haven’t tried them yet as we’re still using our last batch of normal plastic ones, but I’ve heard they’re available from Coles, Woolies, etc.
Jaz, that’s a great point about the bin liners being larger, therefore being used longer. I guess that’s why I don’t use as many of those as the supermarket shopping bags.
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:52 pm
The only way to stop plastics accumulating in the environment is to make them all oxo-biodegradable. Oxobio self-destructs within a few months leaving no fragments or harmful residues. It is made from a by-product of oil refining which would otherwise be wasted.
Biodegradable plastic made from crops is not the answer, because it is much to expensive, it cannot be recycled, and it emits methane in landfill. Even worse, the production of crops to make this stuff places huge demands on scarce land and water resources, and drives up the cost of food for humans and livestock.
Michael Stephen, Chairman, Symphony Environmental UK
January 28th, 2008 at 11:38 am
I read in Habitat mag (ACF’s mag) a story about the steps someone took to stop using bin liners. I’m going to blog about it sometime, but haven’t got to it yet.
And a pic of the plactic ocean is here. Ask matt if the pic is from the Pacific, cause he doesn’t have a source. There are also links from this page to other sources which might have more pics. But I had to stop eating chocolate (truely traumatic for me) so you’ll have to keep it.
Cheers, Clare.
January 31st, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Wow, thanks for those links. I definitely owe you a drink, or something to make up for the trauma of a chocolate-free life
February 1st, 2008 at 3:08 pm
In Europe you have to pay for a bag since I was a kid! 25ct! That way most people took their own bags, and if you forgot them, there is always a corner with cartons to pick from. What are the supermarkets doing here with the cartons? Why not provide them for shoppers as well? They are eco friendly, after use they can be put in the recycle bin.
I am too late for the chocolate but here some info:
Our oceans are turning into plastic…are we?
http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/health-fitness/Our_oceans_are_turning_into_plastic_are_we_2.shtml
The poor little turtle on page 2….
February 1st, 2008 at 3:16 pm
Thanks for the link!
When I was a kid, the local supermarket had a stash of cartons that you could just take, but by the time I left high-school they didn’t do that anymore. I really don’t know why it changed…
February 4th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
WIth regards to the bin - the solution is so simple - have a look at what we’re doing.
http://suburbangreenie.blogspot.com/2008/02/such-waste.html
February 4th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Thanks Heike! I’m interested in trying a newspaper-for-wet-scraps set up, because most of our rubbish is dry now that we compost our kitchen scraps.