Bye bye bags: They are an environmental scourge - but how will we cope without them?
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SYDNEY: Australia's government said Thursday it hoped to phase out the use of plastic bags from the nation's shopping centres by the end of the year. But is it just a populist gimmick?
Environment Minister Peter Garrett said billions of bags were being thrown away every year, causing pollution and harming native wildlife.
Rapid phase-out
"There are some four billion of these plastic bags floating around the place, getting into landfill, ending up affecting our wildlife, and showing up on our beaches while we are on holidays," Garrett told Sky News Australia. "I think most Australians would like to see them rid. We think it's absolutely critical that we get cracking on it."
Garrett, the former lead singer with protest rockers Midnight Oil and ex-head of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said he would meet his state counterparts by April to discuss the issue."We would like to see the phase-out implemented by 2008," he said.
The initiative comes after China this week announced that later this year shoppers would have to pay for plastic bags while the manufacture of ultra-fine bags would be banned outright.
What will replace them?
Green groups welcomed the Australian move, but retailers accused Garrett's centre-left Labor government, elected in November on a strong environmentalist platform, of playing populist politics.
"Plastic bags are a part of our lives, if we replace them we are going to replace them with paper, and where's the paper going to come from?" Australian Retailers Association chief Richard Evans said. "Do we cut down more trees to resolve the paper issue, do we increase greenhouse gases?"
Environmental group Planet Ark said most Australians would support the move. "For too long, plastic bags have been an environmental menace, wasting resources and killing marine life, birds and other animals," spokesman Jon Dee said. "This move by the government is a big win for the environment that will be welcomed by the millions of Australians who have bought and used reusable bags in recent years."
Unfriendly Ban
In my household the banning of plastic bags will not be environmentally friendly. We have always reused plastic shopping bags - long before it became fashionable, when the shop assistants used to think you were weird and annoying for doing it.
Any excess plastic shopping bags are put in a container in the kitchen and we reuse them as garbage bags. They are also used for all sorts of other purposes around the house - from storing Christmas tree decorations in a cupboard, to taking muddy boots camping.
So with the banning of plastic bags will we all have to buy lots of plastic bags?
And one final question - what is the cost in terms of energy and materials of manufacturing all these fabric bags everyone is now accumulating (plus all the garbage bags we'll have to buy)?
I agree with the first
I agree with the first comment. It exactly describes our household reuse of plastic shopping bags and I suspect the same goes for many many households. I'm all in facour of driving change towards a sustanable way of living, but there needs to be a plan for what to do when the bags are removed from use. My fear is that the alternative will be worse for the environment. The commercially available garbage bags appear to be far more resource intensive than the plastic shopping bags that we currently use. Perhaps someone can educate me?
I believe an environmental levy at the point of manufacture will force uses to think harder about reuse. Hopefully the pros and cons of this option will be debated in the public arena well ahead of any govenment decision.
Alternatives
I understand your concern but there are alternatives if we look for them. There are bins you can buy for the kitchen that have inbuilt plastic inserts, and therefore you don’t need to buy plastic bin liners. If you compost most of your organic waste, there is no smell and these bins can be washed out and disinfected every week to be kept hygienic.
In terms of people not having the room or time for composting, check out the Bokashi Bucket – it’s a bin that you can keep in the kitchen, and use to compost all organic material including meat. A special powder in the bin ensures there is no smell. It’s a great option for people who don’t have a lot of space!
There are many ways around
There are many ways around the issue of not having plastic grocery bags. Here in the United States where not such bane has been suggested there are those of us who are making the switch on our own. We have used plastic bags as garbage bags for a long time as well. When you look at the move away from plastic bags as an opportunity it becomes less of a drag. If you cut out plastic packaging from other sources ie. food packaging and multiple layers of packaging in everyday products, use less recycle more, compost food scraps, the amount of waste will be so small that you can carry it in your had to the outside bin. (Most of what makes garbage messy is food scrape compost keeps that from being an issue). Plus when you order something you usually get plastic bags as part of the shipping. Use this kind of bag for packing your decorations. There are solutions to any problem. It doesn't have to be hard. We can make a difference. And if all else fails write someone in America. I'm sure someone would be glad to mail you some reusable grocery/garbage bags.
Some stores are already
Some stores are already using alternatives. A supermarket in the US, Yoke's, uses biodegradable plastic bags. We reuse them in our house, but we know that they won't harm the environment when they're thrown away. I would imagine they'd start making all plastic bags biodegradable, and start making all disposable plastic containers (cups, carry out boxes, plates, etc.) out of biodegradable materials.
This old idea has been in
This old idea has been in practice for many years in the more progressive European countries. I suspect it has been well considered many times over.
Before Plastic bags
It will be good to see the end of plastic bags. The first question is what will we use to carry home our shopping. The answer is to do what most people are already doing - they bring their recyclable bags. If people forget to bring them they can buy one from the store.
The second question is what will people use to carry out their smelly garbage. Before plastic shopping bags came on the scene we wrapped them up in paper but in 2 days the garbage bin became foul. Most people don't have time or room for compost heaps. What to do?
It's a pity there aren't biodegradable plastic shopping bags. There are you say! Well why not use them?
We're all guilty of using
We're all guilty of using these menacing products, but finding a more 'green' alternative is the only viable option i believe, even if it is at the expense of our wallets. We need to take charge and form these new friendly habits, and pass them onto the next generation.
plastic bags
This morning 3 other Coastcare members and I picked up 4 large garbage bags of rubbish from the foreshore at Red Rocks Phillip Island Victoria, and a lot of it was singlet bags. If they were used over and over and then used for rubbish we wouldn't need billions of them. So many of them are dumped. They end up on our coasts and in our seas where they kill wildlife. What we need is to develop an effective biodegradable bin liner and use sturdy resusable bags (e.g. "green bags") for shopping. People are just plain lazy about resusing shopping bags. When I was a kid we used baskets, jeeps and string bags and wrapped our rubbish in newspaper. We certainly never went shopping without our own means of toting the shopping home, and we don't now either.
plastic bags
Some comments here have suggested a seperate bin for food scraps, either for composting or animal food. I grew up on a farm and that is exactly what we did, and it did cut down on the amount of messy garbage to dispose of.
However, gone are the days when most Australians live on the farm, or even in seperate houses. A huge proportion of us live in modern apartments now, and frankly having food scraps and messy smelly garbage in any unsealed container before final disposal is highly distateful. Not having a backyard limits your options.
As for the suggestion that you don't need bin liners - I'd hate to live in that person's house. And how much water do they waste washing out their bins?
The green bags are great, but if you don't drive a car to work you're not going to be carrying them when you stop in at the grocery store on the way home from work for a few items, that are just a few too many for the remainder of your journey home. So how many green bags do you end up with? A family I know who got on the "green bag" bandwagon has over a 100 of them, sitting in a cupboard gathering dust. That's $250 worth of heavy, very environmentally unfriendly bags just sitting there. And they now spend even more money on plastic bin liners they never used to have to buy, which being commercial grade are worse for the environment than the thin plastic shopping bags.
Get with the times people. The answer is not to force people to change their lifestyle at great inconvenience and expense simply out of a delusion that what you are doing is better for the environment (it's worse really - there will be just as many bags in landfills but they'll be thicker plastic).
The answer is simple - mandate biodegradable bags then keep on with business as usual. Problem solved.