It’s reported today that China will ban the free distribution of plastic shopping bags at shops and supermarkets as of 1 June this year, and that the Australian government is considering phasing out plastic bags either through imposing a levy or an outright ban.
The emotive responses in the blog associated with the latter story, and the reaction of some commenters when I posted on this issue on John Quiggin’s blog a couple of years ago, indicate an element of resistance from people who seem to have become dependent on plastic bags and thus claim that all manner of misfortunes will befall them if plastic bags are phased out.
As someone who has been saying “no” to plastic shopping bags for over twenty years, I must admit to being unable to see what their defenders are on about. It isn’t hard for me to just pick up a shoulder bag, a sports bag or a backpack (depending on the size of the shopping run) from my floordrobe and take it along to the shop to pack full of whatever I have purchased. And supermarkets will still home deliver large orders for those of us who don’t drive.
Indeed, as a child and adolescent growing up in a working class suburb of Melbourne in the 1960s and 1970s, I can hardly recall plastic shopping bags ever being used by my family or being issued by local retailers we shopped from. For small purchases of milk or bread I would be sent to the local milk bar or 4-Square with my mother’s string bag or sister’s old school bag. For larger expeditions mum (with or without me, depending on the time of year) might walk or drive to the main streets of Reservoir and either fill a wheeled shopping jeep with her purchases, load up some cardboard boxes which would then go in the car boot, or arrange for home delivery – all without plastic bags, and without any of us ever thinking we were hard done by without such things. It is a testimony to the insidiousness of a certain kind of cultural change that there is now a section of the population which protests that they cannot imagine how they are going to get by without being furnished with (on average) 500 plastic bags per person per year.
The existence of such opposition is relevant to the government’s eventual choice of policy instruments for phasing out plastic bags. Whilst a part of me has a philosophical preference for a simple ban, for pragmatic reasons I think a levy (of 20 cents per bag, roughly similar to Ireland) should be preferred. If plastic bags really are the boon that their defenders claim, one would expect them to be willing to pay such a levy for their freedom to choose a plastic bag. What is far more likely is that we would see a similar process to what has occurred in other jurisdictions, where creating a price signal to partially internalise the environmental externalities has led to reductions of over 90 per cent in plastic bag use as consumers painlessly adopt other options for conveying their purchases.
Indeed, I’m sure that in time even Miranda Devine will become accustomed to using a reusable cloth bag instead of a plastic one to carry around the white feathers she gives out to opponents of the Iraq war!
I will be forced to buy bin liners for about the first time in my life if plastic bags are banned. There will be a net increase in plastic consumption in my household.
And what rally is the impact of plastic bags on the environment (in Australia)? Sweet FA from from what I’ve been able to garner.
Surely it would be far far more sensible to make plastic bags from biodegradable starches? Wouldn’t that please everyone?
Paul: how much of the argument against plastic bags is simply distaste for the image of wastefulness? I’d like some actual quantification of the environmental harm plastic bags do, rather than just a value judgement against them.
Lack of landfill space is hardly the most serious environmental problem Australia faces.
Who gets the 20c levy? And what good will it do? If I spend $200 at the supermarket, an extra dollar or so is not going to make much difference.
And last question: I wonder why Aussie supermarkets don’t offer the large paper sacks that US supermarkets have? I think they did once.
PS I’m not arguing for plastic bags as I have around 50 of the reusable Coles bags in my car (aren’t these made from plastic too?)
We use the supermarket bags to wrap up all our non-recyclable, inside rubbish and drop it in the wheely bin. Works perfectly and is easy on the back.
In the brave new world of those banned bags, punters will just buy large, heavy duty, plastic bags to do the job. Probably making the situation worse.
Why not just corn starch supermarket bags and not scare the impulsive shopper?
At a childcare facility in a study in an economics book I finished reading last week, 20% or so of people were late in picking up their kids. So, the facility starting charging late pick-up fees… and the figure jumped to 50%.
The reason? People felt that if they were going to pay for it, they might as well use it and leave the stress out.
I can see the same scenario happening here: those who previously made an effort to not use plastic bags will feel that their paying 20 cents justifies using them…
It’s not like levy will help the environment directly anyway.
Two (undoubtedly advocacy group) views on the myth of the plastic bag as environmental vandal: PACIA, Productivity Commission
Chad,
Your scenario is spot-on on ‘user pays’ particularly with everyday services such as water, electricity.
If I pay more, why shouldn’t I use it?
Robert and others looking for quantification can check this link.
The Irish experience empirically contradicts the argument that user pays will result in increased usage.
Paul: you might want to read the productivity commission link. It critiques the report you’ve linked to.
Notably, supermarket bags aren’t the ones that end up in litter. Disproportionately, it’s ones from 7-11 and KFC.
Good idea to get rid of the bloody things – only problem is that our local council (in fact every single one that I’ve dealt with) rules that all rubbish must be in plastic bag of some sort.
As to the PACIA report – they’re right on the low volume of the bags, but the rest of it is mostly marketing bullcr$p.
A lot of my customers manufacture these items and +80% of them are currently moving towards biodegradable for the next generation of materials.
Cardboard bags can be made waterproof if wax-type coatings are used (still recyclable).
The plastic UV-breakdown effect occurs but will not work effectively in water (from memory 90% UV spectral absorption occurs in the first 10 cm depth). Ironically the bags we see on the roadside will break down the quickest due to UV exposure with a minor contribution made by greater presence of oxidants (these seem to be the bags a lot of people scream about!).
The worst effect is in the marine environment – larger species mostly (ingestion).
That said, used oils dumped illegally down stormwater drains are pretty bad if not worse.
Sorry but I do not trust the Productivity Commission to come up with any scientifically verifiable fact – if it doesn’t have a dollar value attached they aren’t interested or even read the relevant journals.
I agree with Wilful. I clearly recall noticing, when the plastic bag debate started about six or seven years ago, the bin liner manufacturers association (or something like that) put out a media release in support of moves to ban plastic bags from supermarkets. Then they quickly shut up, realising people would figure out that we would all have to start buying bin liners, and they haven’t been heard from since.
But if IIRC when they looked at overall plastic bag usage, it didn’t change much at all because people were then buying plastic bags to use as bin liners etc. And I’d guess the bin liner ones probably contained more material as they’re designed to be a lot more durable and not break down as fast.
We mostly use home shop and they could definitely stop using plastic bags in those circumstances – though presumably they do it to save time for the drivers unpacking from the crates.
We’d probably end up with a big pile of reusable bags at home because I’m too disorganised to use the ones we already currently have when we do go to the shops
I’m not as against a reduction in the use of plastic bags as may appear from what I said above.
For me, Garrett’s announcement comes too soon after Sen Conroy’s ridiculous Internet filter stuff and his offensive defense of his policy.
I fear the dreaded ALP nanny-state that so many predicted prior to Nov 24 is coming true.
No levy, no excuses – ban the bloody things. The use of plastics to enclose rubbish then dumped in landfill significantly slows breakdown & introduces PCBs & other interesting compounds into the soil & eventually the water cycle. The impact upon the marine environment is far more complex – large fish species, sea birds & aquatic mammals are frequently choked by the things as a spectacular example of its impact.
And the “chuck it away” mentality of the shopping bag is one of the first things we’re going to have to get out of the habit of assuming is our right & destiny – discard, pollute & built in assumptions about plenty are very very BCC – Before Climate Change.
OK Bernice having gone for your most noble ‘fix all’, can you please explain what you do, to take your rubbish, to your non recyclable bin and how it does not end up all over the road after the bin pick-up man has had his way?
Many of the things that ‘need’ to be wrapped in plastic before disposal are compostable – but very few councils collect food scraps separately from general waste. That’s fine if everyone has a compost bin, a garden to put compost on, and The Knowledge. But many of us lack at least one of those. The City of Melbourne Council subsidises compost bins, and encourages their use, but fails to acknowledge that an enormous proportion of their residents live in apartments or have only a tiny courtyard of outside space.
We can’t solve environmental problems by looking at individual factors. We live in a system, and we have to change all of our processes.
As for home delivery – if my organic home delivery guys can pack food in boxes, and collect last week’s box when they drop off the current order, why can’t the big chains?
When I was a child (predates supermarkets, let alone plastic bags), we used to line the kitchen bin with newspaper. It worked a treat. Later, after the invention of supermarkets, we used those big paper bags that they used to pack your stuff into. Again, it worked well, probably even better than newspaper.
The thing is, five seconds thought suggested a number of alternatives to plastic bin liners, and it wouldn’t be too hard to think of something which reduces resource use even further.
And whoever suggested the Productivity Commission as a credible source on anything really needs to rethink things. They are truly one-dimensional in their approach.
The idea that a plastic bag levy will result in higher plastic bag use is wrong. The comparison with paying a fee to arrive late to child care is inappropriate, because it relates to valuing time as opposed to convenience. Will I leave this meeting early to make sure I pick my kid up on time? Well, I’ll be only 10 minutes late and it’s worth $10 to finish the meeting properly.
If the levy has a unit cost higher than the retail price of plasic bags, the levy will work. There’s also the quality of the bag – I find Woolies bags break and leak in my bin.
You’re linking plastic bag usage with climate change?!?!
I was under the impression that the plastic bag problem is more to do with loose bags getting into the environment than with resource limitations (CO2 emissions creating them).
Personally I have no problems with paying for plastic bags and think it would be a good cue for people to think about whether they really do need a bag or not. Returnable (on say deposit) reusable bags would be nicer as then you wouldn’t need to remember to actually bring the bags with you in the first place.
Sorry david, paper gets wet and soggy and is very unpleasant to fish out when covered in food scraps.
We’ve got chooks so the total organic matter in our bins is low, but coffee grounds, meat scraps and the like demand a waterproof solution. Like many many Australians, we’ll be buying bin liners in the future.
I don’t know what pet owners will be doing when they take their dogs for a walk. More than a few will leave the shit there in the street I expect.
I ask again, what is wrong with starch based bags?
Bernice, can you provide some links regarding PCB residues in landfills due to plastic bags? Ta in advance.
FFS we managed to shop for yonks quite happily without the bloody things [yeah I'm an elder who remembers when...] so stop making excuses to keep that which is totally undesirable.
Sheeshh….so simple to get rid of them and yet such a big fuss.
I have a large collection of the green bags which I have been using for several years. I also re-use the fruit and vegetable plastic bags and keep the lot in the boot of the car. Obviously, I have to throw out the fruit bags occasionally, but on the whole, we don’t contribute as much plastic pollution as we once did. I’m working on a way to avoid using the fruit and veg ones altogether, with the latest idea to use those crisper bags, however, as they are also plastic, I’m not sure there’s any real advantage.
Might I suggest you guys read the PC report. While it is impossible for me to ascertain whether their literature survey was adequate, they devoted a whole section to a review of the data quantifying the effect of plastic bags on wildlife. They further asked the organizations advocating plastic bag bans to provide scientific studies supporting the ban:
Count me unpersuaded by argument from anecdote.
Bernice, I hate to be cranky, but you’ve just made a list of unsupported assertions. Even if they are true in isolation, it doesn’t necessarily make it significant. To take one infamous example, the Bald Hills wind farm might indeed have killed one orange-bellied parrot annually. Did that make preventing its construction a good idea?
My experience from working in waste management is that plastic shopping bags are the possibly the biggest beat-up in the entire industry.
There are literally dozens of pressing and major issues about waste management in this country and plastic bags ain’t on the list.
Would it be better if they were banned? Probably. Would it make much of a difference? Definitely not.
It’s an easy one for advocacy and environmental groups to jump on because it’s high visibility, consumer-driven, and also lets people feel they’re making some kind of environmental sacrifice every time they go shopping (combining those two great loves, consumerism and conscience-salving).
But it’s not really doing anything. Robert is right, plastic bags are no issue in Australian landfills at all. And much as it pains me to admit it, there has been some serious empirical flaws in some of the studies around plastic bag pollution in the greater environment (c.f Bernice’s marine example. This source is as partisan as you can possibly get, and whilst I disagree with many of Narga’s statements, their points still stand, check out page 14 of this and more briefly this as well to read about some of the problems with the methodology.
There hasn’t been a lot of research into this. Regarding PCB’s and what-not, plastic bags are a miniscule proportion of solid waste in landfill (0.02%), and also a miniscule proportion of plastic waste. There are many more things in landfills that are much more toxic.
Again, I’m not saying plastic bags are great, I am saying that they divert our attention and money away from more pressing and important issues in waste management. Getting rid of them might be good, but if getting rid of them comes at the expense of other issues, that’s not good.
From my experience it’s actually fast food bags that end up on the street and they’re everywhere along with a vast array of other rubbish. I too use plastic bags as bin liners. I usually use cloth bags to shop getting enough of the plastic ones to compact rubbish in.
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I thinks there’s too much emphasis on regulatory solutions and not enough on actually getting people to take responsibility for this stuff themselves. What good is the banning of plastic bags from the supermarket (especially as so many people use them again) if you’ve got a mass of inconsiderate jerks polluting all and sundry will-he, nil-he?
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Like a lot of environmental issues the emphasis is always on government regulation and not on affecting consumer behaviour. If you influence behaviour then change is more rapid, more effective and cheaper.
I agree that this is a tiny issue compared to other waste problems, let alone broader environmental issues. That’s one reason I support a levy rather than an outright ban. What will happen is that all the people currently screaming will have a choice of paying 10c a bag (which they’ll do occasionally so they can use them as bin liners) or not. They’ll discover the sky hasn’t fallen in, many will actually find advantages to alternatives, so when someone suggests doing something about KFC wrappers or whatever they’ll think “well it worked okay with bags”.
I’m willing to bet there will be less resistance from South Australians, who for have got used to, and love, the rebate on cans and bottles.
An outright ban would simply antagonise people, and send the wrong message that this is the way we are going to be dealing with all environmental issues, which is isn’t.
Patrickg seems to be on the money. What would you say are the real issues in waste management, out of interest?
overall, it’s not the Earth-moving start I expected Peter Garrett to make, now that he has the power…
C’mon kymbos Garret’s got no power. Penny Wong’s got the power. Good thing too. Garrett has all the utility of hair on a shark. He was worse than useless as shadow minister. The ALP only got him in to draw die-hard Oils fans and whack the Greens around thereby saving the Vic Minister for Constituency Marginalization her job.
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My advice feed him hash cookies to keep him quiet and put him somewhere where he won’t get his fingers caught in any power sockets.
Can I suggest that all those who think plastic bags are a small problem go read the chapter “Polymers are Forever” from Alan Weissman’s fantastic book, The World Without Us
You can read the chapter online <a href=”http://www.worldwithoutus.com/toc.html”here
Read about the research of University of Plymouth researcher, Richard Thompson. This is not a tiny issue. It’s a very poorly understood issue. Big difference.
[Indeed, I’m sure that in time even Miranda Devine will become accustomed to using a reusable cloth bag instead of a plastic one to carry around the white feathers she gives out to opponents of the Iraq war!]
Interesting, hadn’t realised that Ms. Devine was so Pro-Plastic.
Perhaps Miranda could improvise a millenery solution for her plastic feather-bag. Tres chic. Effortlessly blending with the new season’s fashions. Be a dreadful shame to waste a perfectly good plastic bag.
War shillers need to look sharp.
If that doesn’t suit, there’s always the practical use that Xavier Bardem found for a plastic bag at the end of the film, “Before Night Falls”.
Like the thread head says!
This is as stupid as Turnbull’s banning of incandescent globes.
And exactly the sort of crap I expect for more three years.
Granted I would prefer not to have the things lurking around, I think the biggest waste management issue we have (in the long-term) is consumer electronics.
Robert, I’ve yet to read the report (hopefully this weekend) – do they have much to say on this side of things?
Ta,
Steve H
Sorry, here’s the link properly:
world without us
Gosh Kymbos, where to start?
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From a consumer-end perspective things that are problematic:
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Source-separation (people are really shit at separating their garbage, it really impacts on recycling rates, particularly in…)
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Multi-Unit Dwellings (apartments buildings are the worst. People in apartments generate more waste than residentials, and are the crappest of the crap at recycling)
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In my, non-technical opinion, much could be done for our waste management issues – from a range of perspectives – if we had better source separation.
If we could relative clean organic, clean glass, clean metals etc. etc. waste streams, the energy savings and recycling rates would be really tremendous. And, if it floats your boat, the amount going to landfill would also go down drastically, landfills would be more processing stations for waste (some of them already are, but there’s still a conventional landfill component).
Potentially there would be more revenue in it for responsible companies, too, though imminent carbon trading is already putting some wind in those sails.
I don’t mind giving up the use of plassdtic bags if they provide reasonably strong paper ones to replace them. But that probably means more trees cut down, woodchipping etc,
As for the wet soggy stuff in the garbage, I don’t see why we can’t resort to the trickj our parents/grandparents had: warap the stuff tightly in newspaper before you put it in the bin.
As for home-delivery serrvice – a friend of mine told me the new local Woolie here in Armidale isn’t doing home deliveries any more. They certainly didn’t like doing home delivery for me because I didn’t buy enough stuff. (And I still don’t.)
Speaking as an apartment dweller, I’d be interested to know why.
I’m sorry Craig Mc, but that comment was breathtakingly inane: “this ALP policy is as bad as a coalition policy – I can’t wait for a new coalition government!” I’m sorry, what? And anyway, Turnbull didn’t ban incandescents, he merely introduced efficiency standards.
myriad, I read that link – sorry, it provides NOTHING to support a ban on plastic bags in Australia. We’re not banning plastic exfoliants, Australia does not ocean dump and never has, and PCBs haven’t been used in plastic bags since the 1970s.
Myriad
Plastics are a problem in terms of non-biodegradability etc. The solution to that problem is a more sustainable way of disposing of househole waste. That’s a design issue.
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A lot of sustainability issues are actually design problems, passing laws often contributes to the explosion of legisaltion. And if this legisaltion can’t be enforced then we have the further problem of it being both useless and eroding whatever respect for law still exists.
Thanks for the link myriad.
Unfortunately the toxicity of post 1970 plastics is as yet not determined.
From the chapter in the World Without Us ( Alan weisman) about plastics- ” Did that mean that plastics were so stable that they weren’t toxic? At what point would they start to naturally break down—and when they did, would they release some fearful chemicals that would endanger organisms sometime far in the future?
Richard Thompson didn’t know. Nobody did, because plastics haven’t been around long enough for us to know how long they’ll last or what happens to them. His team had identified nine different kinds in the sea so far, varieties of acrylic, nylon, polyester, polyethylene, polypropylene, and polyvinyl chloride. All he knew was that soon everything alive would be eating them.”"
The article notes that the wave and shore action on waste plastics in the oceans reduce them to finer and finer particles and eventually they will end up throughout the food chain.
Like so many other things these days. The article isn’t anti plastic bags – rather it examines the end state of plastics used in everyday ways.
One more still apparently neutral substance inside me isn’t a satisfying thought but we would have to stop all plastic use and retrieve and seal away all the plastics currently not contained in landfills to avoid a risk that plastics may be toxic in future . This seems hard to support considering the lack of knowledge on this toxicity.
The broken down pieces of plastic do have some terrible features though -
“Moore( a sailor who found tons of plastic trapped in pools in the Pacific Ocean ) and Thompson began consulting materials experts. Tokyo University geochemist Hideshige Takada, who specialized in EDCs—endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or “gender bendersâ€?—had been on a gruesome mission to personally research exactly what evils were leaching from garbage dumps all around Southeast Asia. Now he was examining plastic pulled from the Sea of Japan and Tokyo Bay. He reported that in the sea, nurdles and other plastic fragments acted both as magnets and as sponges for resilient poisons like DDT and PCBs.
The use of aggressively toxic polychlorinated biphenyls—PCBs—to make plastics more pliable had been banned since 1970; among other hazards, PCBs were known to promote hormonal havoc such as hermaphroditic fish and polar bears. Like time-release capsules, pre-1970 plastic flotsam will gradually leak PCBs into the ocean for centuries. But, as Takada also discovered, free-floating toxins from all kinds of sources—copy paper, automobile grease, coolant fluids, old fluorescent tubes, and infamous discharges by General Electric and Monsanto plants directly into streams and rivers—readily stick to the surfaces of free-floating plastic.
One study directly correlated ingested plastics with PCBs in the fat tissue of puffins. The astonishing part was the amount. Takada and his colleagues found that plastic pellets that the birds ate concentrate poisons to levels as high as 1 million times their normal occurrence in seawater.”
So the waste from plastics can release PCBs ( the plastics are from per 1970 ) and attract other toxins and aid in their movement and concentration.
I’ll be keeping my mouth shut when I surf from now on.
Wilful, I don’t think you understood the chapter – I have a sneaking suspicion you didn’t read it but just searched for ‘plastic bags’. The research shows that all plastics get slowly ground down into tiny particles which then a) last forever and b) go everywhere, causing terrible environmental harm. Plastic bags are on the biggest single sources of plastic. They also don’t biodegrade as people thought in the ocean, so they have a double whammy – hanging around and tangling /choking marine fauna, which is well documented, and then slowly getting broken down. Then there’s the incredible dispersal of ‘nurdles’, the building block of all plastic production, which are also the basis for plastic bags. So creating plastic bags adds to the demand for nurdles, which adds to the pollution of the ocean by nurdles. The finer the plastic is ground, the more problems it is causing.
Then there’s the North Pacific Tropical Gyre – excerpt (emphasis mine)
Capt. Charles Moore of Long Beach, California, learned that the day in 1997 when, sailing out of Honolulu, he steered his aluminum-hulled catamaran into a part of the western Pacific he’d always avoided. Sometimes known as the horse latitudes, it is a Texas-sized span of ocean between Hawaii and California rarely plied by sailors …..
Its correct name is the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, though Moore soon learned that oceanographers had another label for it: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Captain Moore had wandered into a sump where nearly everything that blows into the water from half the Pacific Rim eventually ends up, spiraling slowly toward a widening horror of industrial excretion. For a week, Moore and his crew found themselves crossing a sea the size of a small continent, covered with floating refuse. It was not unlike an Arctic vessel pushing through chunks of brash ice, except what was bobbing around them was a fright of cups, bottle caps, tangles of fish netting and monofilament line, bits of polystyrene packaging, six-pack rings, spent balloons, filmy scraps of sandwich wrap, and limp plastic bags that defied counting……
The real reason that the world’s landfills weren’t overflowing with plastic, he found, was because most of it ends up in an ocean-fill. After a few years of sampling the North Pacific gyre, Moore concluded that 80 percent of mid-ocean flotsam had originally been discarded on land. It had blown off garbage trucks or out of landfills, spilled from railroad shipping containers and washed down storm drains, sailed down rivers or wafted on the wind, and found its way to this widening gyre.
“This,â€? Captain Moore tells his passengers, “is where all the things end up that flow down rivers to the sea.â€? …..
During his first 1,000-mile crossing of the gyre, Moore calculated half a pound for every 100 square meters of debris on the surface, and arrived at 3 million tons of plastic. His estimate, it turned out, was corroborated by U.S. Navy calculations. It was the first of many staggering figures he would encounter. And it only represented visible plastic: an indeterminate amount of larger fragments get fouled by enough algae and barnacles to sink. In 1998, Moore returned with a trawling device, such as Sir Alistair Hardy had employed to sample krill, and found, incredibly, more plastic by weight than plankton on the ocean’s surface.
In fact, it wasn’t even close: six times as much.
The Federal Government’s Threatened Species Scientific Committee has identified harmful marine debris, including plastic bags, as a “key threatening process” under the Environment Protection & Biodiversity Conservation Act.
It’s funny, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone here bewail the excess of packaging these days. Surely a more insidious crap generator than plastic bags, which can be reused.
I was in Japan recently, for the first time, and I was shocked, horrified, by the amount of unnecessary packaging that is considered good service in their culture. Plastic cases inside bags inside boxes inside bags, it went on and on. And you were looked at very oddly if you didn’t want every single item individually wrapped.
Wilfull, you beat me to it. i just wrote this….
It is whats in the plastic bags that is important. Plastic bags are just the tip of the iceburg in packaging. Each individual product at the supermarket is packaged in plastic, paper or metal and this will still be the case if plastic shopping bags are replaced.
What rubbish is there that is not recyclable or compostable? basically it is product packaging.
Recycling as we know it is dysfunctional as it requires a lot of energy. Most stuff that is recycled is just packaging.
When Australia was obstructing at the Bali climate change conference Garrett was issuing media releases about whales and Orang Utans. His job as the not-climate change environment portfolio is to use his high profile to create an illusion of green credibility for the Rudd government. As such he focuses on (and will continue to focus on) individual feel good solutions while avoiding the hard issues.
I agree with Patrick G’s comment @ 24 “It’s an easy one for advocacy and environmental groups to jump on because it’s high visibility, consumer-driven, and also lets people feel they’re making some kind of environmental sacrifice every time they go shopping (combining those two great loves, consumerism and conscience-salving).�
Garrett is just promoting easy, tangential and populist campaigns to raise the profile of the ALP on green issues. This is his primary portfolio responsibility. he promotes solar hot water and the new light bulbs while his party facilitates the coal industry and our carbon emmissions increase. He opposes plastic bags while his party embraces consumerism and growth economies.
Garrett is just greenwash – nothing but window dressing.
I think it’s rather a strawman argument to assume those of us who are for the banning of plastic bags are somehow therefore in favour of, or unaware of, the impacts of all the other packaging ang throw-away materials we use. I certainly am. It’s why I loved the year I lived in Switzerland where you could leave all packaging in the store, return it to the store, require manufacturers to pick it up for large items, and plastic bags were prohibitively expensive to buy. Also, recycling was extremely easy, there were rebates just like SA on glass and metal packaging, and you had to buy labels to put on your garbage so that you paid by bag for unsorted waste.
Banning plastic bags is a relatively simple, good first step towards introducing such measures. Its something that can be done with relatively little expense or inconvenience, and also removes a significant problem.
I agree Adrien that it partially a design issue – Cradle to Cradle is one of my favourite books. As the chapter from Weissman shows, plastics are highly problematic for us in their current design form, and likely to remain so for quite some time.
I’d heard that part of the environmental problem with plastic bags was that they’re made from petroleum (same as other plastics).
I honestly don’t understand the angst over a possible ban, although I think a levy is more likely to get implemented. It’s not like the world would end – people coped without them before and they’ll do so again. It’d be a quick win that’d help people understand that making changes for the environment isn’t as awful as they’re afraid it’ll be – which can only help later as other changes have to be made.
For all the stick that the Productivity Commission gets here, their report basically says what patrickg argues. A small percentage of plastic bags actually become litter, and there is little evidence to support the assertion that once they make it into the waterways they actually do much damage. The only source the PC could find was a Canadian study of marine life of Newfoundland, conducted in the early 80’s, which observed a number of animals being killed mostly by plastic debris from ships. People then used to extrapolate effects of plastic bags (rather than debris) for Australia.
Reducing plastic bags certainly distracts from bigger ticket items of waste management and the environment in general.
myriad, I did read the entire chapter. Australian plastic bags are typically landfilled, and there is little or no evidence that an appreciable quantity are making their way out to sea. So the concerns raised in your link are not relevant to Australia’s situation (which I believe my comment identified). And I’ve never seen a nurdle on an Australian beach. If they’re on US beaches, serves em right for the disgusting process of ocean dumping.
Julie, plastic bags are typically made from petrochemicals (though they could and maybe should be made from better materials, as I commented earlier). But a mere teaspoon, a trivial amount compared to other uses for oil. Removing plastic bags is symbolic, but it’s symbolic of populist, irrational stunts that annoy people without actually solving a real problem.
Julie: my objections are several-fold:
* My innate preference is that we should regulate people’s behaviour only where there is a compelling case to do so.
* I want political decisions to be made on the basis of evidence, where possible. The hard evidence that this would make much difference appears to be weak.
* This goes double for environmental issues, where too much policy is being made on the basis of what sounds good, rather than what would make a substantive difference.
* Deluding people that they’re making a difference, when they’re not, does not help with the actual changes that will need to be made to achieve environmental sustainability.
No matter the harm plastic bags do or do not cause, isn’t anybody else creeped out by the idea of the federal government intervening in how we get the groceries home? I mean, really, what will the penalties be for flouting the ban? Fines? Jail? It’s like the govenrment telling me how to light my house (started under Howard) or making me opt-out of a net filtering system. Shouldn’t small-l liberals be aghast at this statism?
myriad, I did read the entire chapter. Australian plastic bags are typically landfilled, and there is little or no evidence that an appreciable quantity are making their way out to sea.
If you’ll pardon the pun, and not meant rudely – rubbish. First of all you’d have to explain why evidence from overseas that 80% of plastic ends up in the ocean is incorrect from Australia, remembering that our landfill and waste management practices are virtually identical. Second of all while I’m not aware of any major studies of offshore plastic, I do know from a stint in the National Oceans Office that CSIRO Marine and other leading instititutions have given no reason to doubt that the Australian experience is any better. There’s an almost certainty that Australia’s refuse contributes to the North-West Pacific Gyre. There’s also been numerous inventories of coastal and nearshore waste for the fishing industry and the light that demonstrate on a smaller scale but rather comprehensively that huge amounts of plastic, including millions of plastic bags, wash into Australia’s near shores.
That the PC couldn’t find any of this leaves me thinking they didn’t try very hard; and didn’t bother in particular looking for international sources on plastic life-cyle, but rather kept a narrow focus on plastic bags.
And I’ve never seen a nurdle on an Australian beach.
That’s about as silly a statement as me saying “I’ve never seen an engineer over 5 foot 7 so tall ones mustn’t exist”. I live in Tasmania, and have found plenty of nurdles. I doubt we have the concentration yet of the northern hemisphere, but I’m left wondering when you write silly stuff like “not relevant to Australia’s situation” what part of”globala oceanic body” you don’t get. We’re just as connected to ocean pollution as everywhere else, and in fact with a claimed Exclusive Economic Zone twice the size of our land area (16 million square kilometres) a highly defensible argument can be made that we have a moral obligation in claiming so much oceanic territory to keep it and the “adjacent” ocean in good nick.
If they’re on US beaches, serves em right for the disgusting process of ocean dumping.
Again you’ve misread the article. What the researcher found was that plastics thought to be dumped in landfills were finding their way into the sea. Australia also has a long and inglorious tradition of sea dumping, so I’d be careful about glass houses and all.
But a mere teaspoon, a trivial amount compared to other uses for oil. Removing plastic bags is symbolic, but it’s symbolic of populist, irrational stunts that annoy people without actually solving a real problem.
China has worked out it can save 80 million barrels of oil. I’m not sure that’s trivial. Some experts confidently predict that there’ll come a time in the not too distant future when we’ll mine our landfills for products made from petrochemicals so we can recycle them. Our mass graves of tyres will keep us going a very long time.
like, not light.
No matter the harm plastic bags do or do not cause, isn’t anybody else creeped out by the idea of the federal government intervening in how we get the groceries home? I mean, really, what will the penalties be for flouting the ban? Fines? Jail?
If they ban their use, that means banning their importation/production and sale in Australia, not having squads of police chasing down people to check whether their shopping is in an old reused plastic bag or a clandestinely obtained new one.
so the answer is no, not creeped out at all.
Just remember myriad, this sort of nu-labor nannyism cuts both ways (as we see with Steven Conroy’s feint at the internet) … just ask the Brits. You may enjoy this sop to the aesthetic preferences of inner-city lefties right now, but I smell a raft of bans and regulations and ID cards and so on coming down the pike…
Myriad: I very much doubt that the Chinese can save that much oil.
China uses about 2.6 billion barrels of oil per year. 80 million barrels of oil is about 3% of that. Do you really think that China uses 3% of its oil making shopping bags?
Furthermore, some experts who think hydrocarbons are in such short supply that we’ll be mining landfills for them have clearly never heard of this little substance called “coal”.
Apologies Robert, my eyes saw an 8 instead of a 3 –
China will save 37 million barrels of oil per year from plastic bag ban
Fair enough, myriad.
Furthermore, some experts who think hydrocarbons are in such short supply that we’ll be mining landfills for them have clearly never heard of this little substance called “coal�.
I think you’ll find they have and are well-versed energy and life-cycle experts. I apologise I can’t remember a name to give you, but I’m
meant to bereading a rather complex report on wetlands at the moment and trying to correct it, causing a bit of a brain freeze (hence plastic bag procrastination). Come to think of it there might be a reference in Cradle to Cradle?the point that I was making at any rate is that our plastic consumption and disposal is so prolific, which is demonstrated by the fact that it even raises such a possibility. The ‘Great Pacific Garpbage Patch’ is the size of Texas. That’s a truly stunning amount of plastic.
First of all you’d have to explain why evidence from overseas that 80% of plastic ends up in the ocean is incorrect from Australia, remembering that our landfill and waste management practices are virtually identical.
maybe you can start by explaining how plastic bags = all plastic? And provide evidence for your myriad of claims, noting that our waste management practices certainly are not virtually identical. Little or no incineration, no ocean dumping, evidence already provided above that plastic bags aren’t commonly entering the ocean.
I’m not aware of any major studies of offshore plastic, which is code for ’so I’ll just make some confident assertions’.
And when I write ‘not relevant to Australia’s situation’, I mean, we do not have the same waste practices as in the north. As the author of your link says, ocean dumping is huge, littering from merchant shipping is a cause, where are the plastic bags via storm drains in this?
China 80 million barrels of oil? A day, a year? Try 37 million for starters. Or about 0.1% of their annual consumption. (But to repeat myself for the nth time, I agree that biodegradable ones from cornstarch etc are most likely far better.)
Seriously, you really think plastic bags in Australia are a major environmental issue, and Peter Garrett is going to fix the problem with a blanket ban?
Fair enough, Robert, and thanks – that’s more articulate than some of the comments I’ve seen! Would you consider a levy better than a ban, in that it’s less regulation, but more of a reflection of the cost of using a bag? Really, giving stuff away for free that’s only going to go in the bin is a generally stupid idea, in my opinion. At least if it costs something, they can consider whether the value they’ll get from it is worth paying for.
I still think that although it’s not an enormous change, it’s better to start the public off with something that has at least some support (not everyone hates the idea of getting rid of plastic bags), and ease their way towards more significant changes. It’s pretty rare for people to jump right in the deep end and make a success of lifestyle changes – let them dip their toes in the water and see that it’s fine, first
Myriad: the difference is that Turnbull was rightfully treated like an idiot within his party for his proposal, which was to ban incandescent globes – not impose efficiency constraints. That’s the recently passed, and equally stupid, US legislation which is just banning by stealth.
I doubt customs will be searching for plastic bags either. They’ll just ban their distribution at retail outlets. Well, supermarkets that is. I’m betting other retail shops will be left alone, which only highlights the idiocy of the policy.
What sort of other changes do you have in mind as we move into Ruddtopia, Julie?
Mark Jan 10th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Speaking as an apartment dweller myself (there are 95 other units in my building), I’d say first and foremost that it’s this: safety in numbers. You don’t “own” your own bin, so the chances of being questioned about your (lack of) proper rubbish-disposal behaviour are fewer. Also, and especially in the case of my block, apartment-dwellers are often among the poorer, less-educated members of society. Hey – if you could afford a house rather than a flat (whether buying or renting), wouldn’t you take it if you could? We can go through the usual whys and wherefores regarding which groups are more likely to do certain things – and there are always plenty of alternative stories – but the general fact is *puts chardonnay socialist hat on* the less you have to lose to others, the less you care about the needs of others.
We’ve got communal bins at the entrance/exit points in our building and there are very clear signs saying “no household rubbish”, but almost every day someone’s dumped a plastic shopping bag full of rubbish on the top of one of them. (Fat lot of good it is putting lids that are too small to allow bags in – they just sit on top, thus preventing the “legitimate” disposal of fast food packaging etc.) When you have to travel down four or five stories, then walk another 50m to the bin area, I can understand why it gets done. Christ, I even did it once when I was in a hurry…
Same goes for smoking in the lift or around the place generally – I’d hazard a guess that the number of smokers in this building is proportionately higher than the average, so people are less likely to complain about someone smoking in the “wrong” place because it’s quite possible they, too, do it or because it’s simply not worth complaining about. What do you do – complain to the strata company about someone you’ve never met and who might otherwise be a perfectly pleasant person?
Mind you, most people in Perth (and I’ve lived in the good and bad parts) are pretty conscientious about putting recyclable goods in the right bins, though some dopey bints still put plastic bags containing bottles/cans/etc in the recyling bins despite the very clear request to not do so.
Banning plastics bag which people often re-use while allowing supermarkets to individually wrap lots of vegetable/fruit items that were previously unwrapped is totally useless. And that’s besides all the other plastic packaging for every other consumer good. I particularly hate that super hard plastic that is impossible to open and seems to surround everything now i.e. like light bulbs.
And think of the practicality too. I take my green bags to the supermarket but every now and then I forget. What do I do if they’re banned? Carry 100 items in my hand?
Mark: “Speaking as an apartment dweller, I’d be interested to know why.”
At my free-standing home, I have a very large compost setup (takes a lot including vacuum cleaner bag contents), recycling crates etc. I take metal and that sort of thing to the local recycling centre. So only things I can’t dispose of otherwise go into the rubbish bin.
When I was living in a 15th floor apartment at Surfers for a time, the only garbage disposal facility was a large chute on each floor. There were shelves for bottles and newspapers but I rarely saw anyone use them. It was probably just easier for everyone to dump everything down the chute.
I have no idea where the garbage went after it was ‘chuted’.
Craig Mc –
If that’s true why did said party:
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a. Pass the ban as law, and
b: Very nearly elect him leader of the opposition?
You may enjoy this sop to the aesthetic preferences of inner-city lefties right now
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This Boltaburbian bollocks is so naff find something new. D’you actually know any ‘inner city lefties’? Speaking as someone who’s lived in inner city neighbourhoods for two decades lemme let you in on a couple things:
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a. Inner city people are not all lefties. In fact in my experience they mostly think politics is a disease for which there is no cure. In fact most of ‘em probably vote for whichever party likes drugs the most- heads up LDP
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b. There are plenty of Tories in the inner-city as well as libertarians, ALP right-wingers and downright fascists.
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c. They’re just as likely to be pigs as anyone else
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d. There ain’t much to be gained electorally by pandering to them.
I just hurt my eyes reading about the new appointment of Christopher Sidoti ,who I wont go on about,but how strange that both the ALP and the Greens were using Fluorescent lighting in other ways besides arguments about efficiences. Badly put as that sentence structure was,the N.S.W. government used these lights to keep teenagers away from certain areas,along with music. Google Search. The same report indicated lights made some difference in Dubbo,and yet, recent reports suggest that these lights drive teenagers especially crazy.No human rights in that.So when it comes to plastic bags,multiple solutions to the plastic bag as waste in the environment need to be invented,as well as humans finding ways to either reduce or transform their use.Banning them is also a good options,when the individual has an alternative in mind every shopping moment.Panning to buy isnt that easy on low incomes,and as inflation,and other matters effect buying choices the problem of replacement has to bean organised reality.There maybe a case,for example wherever it can take place,of local councils taking up the role of home food delivery,which must be a more pleasant experience than seeing them at the tip site as flimsy plastics.Another approach,offered here already is revalue them,I do….great in winter to slip over the soft shoes or rainy periods and walk the walk.Another more appealing approach for the scientifically inclined maybe, that householders separate these bags and collect theirs in larger street volumes and ,if the problem of overloaded electricity generation had a potential to feed directly into the coal burning ,um, apart from a lot of ums, then only the hazardous polymer reality has to be assessed.Questions If the temperature of burning them at these sites will not activate the hazardous materials to biological species..could it be then a useful approach.if greenhouse abatement was still in mind!?I do not want to be considered careless,but readied to think about renaming these bags as assets not to blow away like cheap kites ,and be totally under human control for them seem to me a destiny to destructive for the critters I already know about as being maimed.
Anti-plastic bag people PLEASE address the practical issue of how I am supposed to get my non-recyclable material to the wheely-bin without the supermarket plastic bags I have been re-using or buying new bin liners.
With special attention, as I have tried it, to the issue of shit up and down the street because no bags were used to contain it in the wheely bin.
They did? I thought that legislation wasn’t coming in until 2009 if the Libs were returned. I doubt the ALP would shy at passing said idiotic law so even if it hasn’t already passed, it will soon.
Key word: “nearly”.
All these dumb bans will only create a nice black market for someone. Since 25W globes disappeared from the supermarket shelves, I’ve bought about 20 of the things for long-term storage from hardware stores. I may even start an Ebay store for them, and learn to love green idiocies all the way to the bank.
I’m not against more energy efficient globes per-se, just against being forced to use crappy, expensive alternatives. CFLs are great in certain applications, just not in my house (except for a range hood which constantly blows incandescents). LEDs look more promising, but at $60 a globe I won’t be rushing out to buy them.
It’s quite clear that this problem needs to be considered in a broader context; namely, we also need to consider the excessive amount of product packaging that finds its way onto supermarket goods these days, how we can encourage people to adopt better options, and what people will use for their household waste if not the humble plastic bag.
It seems at first glance like a trivial problem, but changing people’s behaviour on a large scale on even a simple matter like this is no laughing matter.
Someone’s beaten me to it
Craig – Regardless of when the legislation was coming in the Libs were approving of it. Turnball lost by 2 votes. That means almost half the caucus supports him. So do I, at least in the sense that I’d like the Lib leader to be a liberal for a change.
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re Incandescent globes: despite what I think my radically different views from you re green idiocy are, I agree. Removing standard globes from marketplace will simply remove the incentive for the makers of LED and fluro globes to make their products cheaper and better. I confess I hadn’t thought of the black market angle.
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I tend to think sustainability to be the key political issue of our times. Unlike many people who think likewise however I believe the solutions will mostly be found via design innovation and altering behaviour not regulation. The public and private sector each have a place and a field of endeavour in which they are best. Innovation is not the government’s forte.
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Unfortunately this issue is still grafted to a left/right type spectrum. Hence the right are generally hostile to it and the left are blind to the pragmatic approaches of say: Schwarzanegger or Richard Branson.
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And lest we forget the unbecoming cosy relationship between certain fossil fuel interests and certain politicans who profess to be free marketeers.
I know heaps! Comment by friend of friend the other day:
maybe you can start by explaining how plastic bags = all plastic?
Never have said so, have pointed to evidence that they are a significant part of the plastic waste stream, to the tune of several billion a year in Australia.
And provide evidence for your myriad of claims, noting that our waste management practices certainly are not virtually identical. Little or no incineration, no ocean dumping, evidence already provided above that plastic bags aren’t commonly entering the ocean.
Wrong again. For Europe:
Even in many developed countries, most solid waste is landfilled. For instance, within the European Union, although policies of reduction, reuse, and diversion from landfill are strongly promoted, more than half of the member states still send
in excess of 75 per cent of their waste to landfill (e.g. Ireland 92 per cent), and in 1999 landfill was still by far the main waste disposal option for Western Europe (EEA, 2003).
For Australia
“Despite these efforts, it is clear that almost all (96 per cent of Australia’s waste ends up in landfill.
You haven’t quoted a single article, I gave you an entire chapter quoting in detail the research of the two people on the planet on the cutting edge of plastic life cycle analysis. You haven’t even offered a postage stamp to cover your butt.
And when I write ‘not relevant to Australia’s situation’, I mean, we do not have the same waste practices as in the north.
yes we do.
As the author of your link says, ocean dumping is huge, littering from merchant shipping is a cause, where are the plastic bags via storm drains in this?
So you’re not familiar with the massive amount of shipping that moves through Australia’s waters then? And at the risk of repeating myself again, you clearly didn’t read the article closely, nor the bits I excerpted for you along the way – let’s try again with the pertinent bits in bold:
the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Captain Moore ….and his crew found themselves crossing a sea the size of a small continent, covered with floating refuse. It was not unlike an Arctic vessel pushing through chunks of brash ice, except what was bobbing around them was a fright of cups, bottle caps, tangles of fish netting and monofilament line, bits of polystyrene packaging, six-pack rings, spent balloons, filmy scraps of sandwich wrap, and limp plastic bags that defied counting……
The real reason that the world’s landfills weren’t overflowing with plastic, he found, was because most of it ends up in an ocean-fill. After a few years of sampling the North Pacific gyre, Moore concluded that 80 percent of mid-ocean flotsam had originally been discarded on land. It had blown off garbage trucks or out of landfills, spilled from railroad shipping containers and washed down storm drains, sailed down rivers or wafted on the wind, and found its way to this widening gyre.
So let’s review:
there’s a floating trash heap the size ot Exas in the Pacific – you know the ocean we border
It’s full of plastic, including plastic bags beyond counting
further investigation showed that 80% of total plastic – remembering this includes plastic bags – disposed on land actually makes its way into the ocean
Seriously, you really think plastic bags in Australia are a major environmental issue, and Peter Garrett is going to fix the problem with a blanket ban?
Obviously I seriously think getting rid of plastic bags is a good idea, and I’ve provided lots of evidence to back that. You can add to it the point that Clean Up Australia makes, which is they accumulate in the litter stream because of their low/no biodegradeability – remembering again from the article I originally quoted that those claiming to be biodegradeable did not do so in the ocean, where most of them end up, because of lower temperatures, not being as exposed to UV etc.
I don’t necessarily favour a ban over a hefty price tag as a way of phasing them out, but out they must go. Those who correctly point out that the amount of packaging supermarkets use is atrocious are also correct, but I think miss the point that removing plastic bags is an important first behavioural step towards getting consumers and suppliers to question what they are offered / offer. Europeans expect and like lots less packaging because they’ve had their behaviour modified through incentives and disincentives, and the outright removal where deemed appropriate of certain packaging. They all seem perfectly happy and unconcerned about the level of government intervention in their lives, quite capable apparently of managing the horror of disposing of certain items with only paper bags to use, and guess what we could too.
Myriad, you need to take a reality check.
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A chapter in a book does not evidence make. The dude’s a captain, not a doctor, for a start. The “rock solid” evidence you rely on is nothing more than an anecdotal account, it’s not real. And even if it was, it’s clear from his description that most of the garbage, is not in fact plastic bags. He may think it comes from land, but we’ve seen nothing to demonstrate that.
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Despite your assertion, Australia’s waste management practices are very different to Europe (which, I might add, is far from homogenous, waste speaking), and also different to the US. The way we process waste is different, our laws regarding contamination are different, and – equally important – _where_ we put it is different.
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Again I’m not saying that plastic bags are good – they’re not, but to argue they are a significant waste problem ignores the realities.
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People seem to have a lot of difficulty realising that when a report or whatever says “plastic” it doesn’t just mean plastic bags, or any type. There are multitudes of plastic in our daily lives, wildly different in construction, how it breaks down, etc. You just can’t lump them together because they happen to be “plastic”, and you certainly can’t say one is as good as the other, or evidence of the other, etc.
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Despite what the beloved captain moore thinks, landfills _are_ overflowing with plastic: the idea that it ends up in the ocean is contradicted by all available evidence.
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What do you think landfills do? Dig a hole in the ground, chuck the trash in and forget about it? It’s a lot more complicated than that. There are strict regulations and large amounts of science ensuring that _nothing_ that goes into a landfill comes out of the containment areas, and it’s mostly successful. They monitor this constantly.
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I’m the last person to defend landfilling, or usage of plastics, but if you’re looking for a straw man, he’s stuffed full of plastic bags.
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Mark two reasons: 1 Logistical: there is no effective way to limit an individual’s waste production in an apartment building
2: sociological (imho): people don’t take ownership because it’s not “their” garbage, and it only take two bad people to ruin a whole MUD’s waste stream.
Interesting report on CH7 news tonight about energy-saving globes: they present a major problem because they contain mercury. The report said they will cause a major environmental problem as a result of ending up in landfill.
In the US they come with a warning that if you should drop one and break it, the room should be cleared for at least 15 minutes.
I think the environmental movement is too ready to condemn, ban whatever but no real solutions are offered.
One suggestion above is to wrap your garbage in newspaper. How many people are like me these days: I haven’t bought a paper for along time only using online news sources.
The world isn’t like it was 20 or 30 years ago. We can’t go back to a pre-plastic world. Think about the environmental damage that the computer you are using causes both in its manufacture, distribution and disposal.
Banning plastic bags (or incandescent globes) without a reasonable, viable and inexpensive replacement is political grandstanding.
I can’t find a way to directly link to that CH7 report on the globes. At the moment it’s on the left side of this page:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/top/#
This is good business. Supermarkets will be able to sell rubbish bags instead of giving them away.
Sans Blog: this is well known. The quantities of mercury per bulb are quite small, but if you can recycle them it’s certainly better to do so.
I dunno whether it applies here as different sorts of coal have different contaminants, but in the USA the mercury spewing out into the environment through coal-fired power station exhausts from powering an incandescent bulb is much higher than the amount of mercury in a compact flouro.
Myriad,
I realise that I am comng late to this debate, but you have made a fundamental mistake that should be rectified. You have repeatedly claimed that 80 per cent of plastic waste disposed on land winds up in the ocean. By your own evidence, this is not correct. You quote from a book that:
You then interpret this as meaning that
The original quote does not support that conclusion. What it says is that most of the plastic that winds up in the ocean was originally disposed on land. So if there are 100 tonnes of plastic in the ocean, 80 per cent of that (80 tons) was originally disposed on land. The other 20 per cent (20 tons) is from other sources (discarded fishing lines, cruise liners dumping rubbish over the side etc.)
The truth is that the vast majority of plastic that is disposed on land (i.e. to landfill) goes from your bin, to the truck, to the landfill, into the hole where each day it is covered over with soil. Some does blow away, but fences around landfills and better truck design can reduce that. Litter traps in storm water drains can further reduce the amount that makes it out to sea. There is no way to estimate the amount of waste that winds up in the sea, but the figure would be far less than one per cent of all plastic that is properly disposed (i.e. in a bin).
Litter is an altogether different issue, and litter does wind up in stom water drains and in the sea. Supermarket bags are a small proportion of the litter stream. Other sources (chicken shops, 7-11s) are more significant.
Banning plastic bags will have negligible environmental benefits, and will impose a number of costs through inconvenience to consumers, slower supermarket registers, the requirement to purchase more epensive replacements for bin liners and a number of other factors.
R
myriad, not to pile on, but you aren’t supporting your case at all. And starting to get a bit narky and rude while you’re at it. I did provide two important Australia-relevant links (PACIA and PC) to your one, not-Australia relevant book chapter (so there!). You really haven’t supported your case. One thing you did incidentally clear up was that there’s no PCB risk form plastic bags these days, so thanks for that.
You’re (and your much-loved book chapter) banging on about plastic, the topic has ALWAYS been plastic bags (in Australia). You have deliberately or accidentally conflated the two.
I am persuaded by patrickg (if I wasn’t already) that the environmental benefits of eliminating plastic shopping bags would be considerably less than that of other, less well publicised, potential reforms in waste management and reduction. But to acknowledge this is not to say that these benefits aren’t worth pursuing.
A 2007 Regulatory Impact Statement prepared for the Environment Protection and Heritage Council does report that modelling by the Allen Consulting Group predicts that the quantifiable costs of measures to eliminate plastic shopping bags would be greater than the quantifiable benefits. However, this has to be set against two important considerations:
1. As I have previously discussed, economic modelling of the costs and benefits of environmental regulation exhibits a consistent pattern of overestimating the costs and underestimating (or even completely overlooking) the benefits (although in this case the modelling has been done by the Allen Consulting Group, whose work is usually an honourable exception to the general pattern).
2. The RIS acknowledges that there are unquantified (and, one could add, unquantifiable) environmental, social and ethical considerations which may also be considered when deciding policy on this issue.
Also if we look at the ACG modelling, we find that its estimates of the net social cost of options such as a plastic bag levy or a ban on plastic bags would be in the range of $700-950 million spread over a ten year period. That equates to $70-95 million per year, to $3.50-4.90 per person per year, and to 0.96-1.34 cents per person per day (and remember this is before we factor in the unquantified benefits). Is one cent per day really such a dreadful impost for the sake of sparing some wildlife (even if not all that many) an excruciating death?
Patrick,
the ‘dude’ might be a captain, but his findings have been backed by many other sources. A quick spring through the bibiolography and any sites dedicated to plastic/waste issues show that. Try something like this for example
Despite your assertion, Australia’s waste management practices are very different to Europe (which, I might add, is far from homogenous, waste speaking), and also different to the US. The way we process waste is different, our laws regarding contamination are different, and – equally important – _where_ we put it is different.
For five years I had a boss who was a solid waste management expert and highly active in global waste management conferences etc. He’d be disagreeing, as I do, with your claim. Fundamentally, we dispose of our rubbish in the same way, almost entirely by landfill. The main difference would be that Europeans have worked much harder, and the USA overall much less hard, to separate out waste streams for recycling prior to reaching the dump. You’ve claimed here that ‘it’s different’ but provide no evidence. Europeans also have much more stringent measures on landfill management, we are playing catch-up.
Again I’m not saying that plastic bags are good – they’re not, but to argue they are a significant waste problem ignores the realities.
I’m not saying they are the most significant waste source, and if you were to give me a choice between dealing with all the other plastic we use and plastic bags, I’d go for the former every time. But that’s not the choice here, and there is ample evidence that plastic bags are a significant problem through their entire life cycle. Clean up Australia certainly identify them as a significant issue. Far more pertinently, the identification under the EPBC Act of marine debris as a threatening process means that there is a general consensus across the Australian scientific committee that marine debris – which is over 80% plastic by most estimates – is a major threat to marine life. Now again, if you were to give those scientists a choice between plastic bags or everything else plastic being dealt with, I’m sure they’d take the latter. But I doubt you’ll find any of them saying it’s a waste of time getting rid of plastic bags.
You just can’t lump them together because they happen to be “plastic�, and you certainly can’t say one is as good as the other, or evidence of the other, etc.
That was a reasonable assertion perhaps ten years ago, but subsequent research does in fact ‘lump’ all plastics together in terms of overall environmental effect when it comes to the mechanistic breakdown of all plastic into tiny particles that are being ingested by all hierarchical levels in marine ecosytems. Obviously you wouldn’t rank plastics the same on the basis of chemical content and breakdown. The major impact that plastic is having in the oceans is through its breakdown into smaller and smaller pellets being ingested by everything from seabirds to zooplankton. Plastic bags also do this over time in the ocean; ergo what is written about this deletirious effect also applies to them.
What do you think landfills do? Dig a hole in the ground, chuck the trash in and forget about it? It’s a lot more complicated than that. There are strict regulations and large amounts of science ensuring that _nothing_ that goes into a landfill comes out of the containment areas, and it’s mostly successful. They monitor this constantly.
I’ve worked on landfill site remediation, extension and closures. Most are poorly designed. Nearly all have leachate problems, and Australia has many older landfill sites that have proved extremely difficult to cap and seal effectively, and have a long history of ‘leaking’ rubbish. Plastic debris is the singlest biggest escapee, and any trip to a local tip will confirm that in seconds; and of that plastic, plastic bags float on the breezes beautifully. I would think that perhaps much of mainland Australia looks different in this regard to Tasmania, but the evidence would seem to be to the contrary. Clean up Australia (which the Federal Dept. uses as a source by the way) estimates around 50 million plastic bags escape / are littered. Moore and others would argue pretty convincingly that this is a conservative estimate. The number of plastic bags we use keeps growing, and nearly all of them linger for anywhere between 2-100 years, so the effects are cumulative.
Required,
The truth is that the vast majority of plastic that is disposed on land (i.e. to landfill) goes from your bin, to the truck, to the landfill, into the hole where each day it is covered over with soil. Some does blow away, but fences around landfills and better truck design can reduce that. Litter traps in storm water drains can further reduce the amount that makes it out to sea. There is no way to estimate the amount of waste that winds up in the sea, but the figure would be far less than one per cent of all plastic that is properly disposed (i.e. in a bin).
You’re quite right that I made a major error in my reading of the text, and you had me right up ’til this paragraph, which is also erroneous.
If we agree that 80% of marine debris comes from land, and that evidence shows that over 80% of that debris is plastic, I think you’re rather hard pressed to make an assertion such as “far less than 1% of all plastic that is properly disposed of” makes it into this marine waste. Bot this overview and this more digestible brochure clearly identify ‘properly disposed’ of plastic waste as being part of the source of the debris. If it was as insignificant as you are suggesting, I doubt they would have bothered.
Paul, just to correct some misconceptions in your post:
1. The one cent per person per day that you claim is a small price to pay to spare some wildlife is a net social cost calculated after taking into account the benefit of saving that wildlife by ACG – so really it is an additional unjustifiable cost of the ban.
2. The ACG, honourable people though they are, have done some strange things in calculating the environmental benefit of the ban. In effect, they have assumed (without explaining why) that the environmental cost of a plastic bag in the environment is $1. This is 50 times greater than their own best estimate of the cost. (some might call this massaging the data to reduce the net social cost).
3. The key issue here is whether banning a product because of a small percentage of that product ending in the environment is the most sensible policy. One would think that litter reduction policies would usually be preferable (otherwise you could imagine a long list of candidates for a ban).
Final word on this topic from me if I can help it -
Planet Ark has about the best summary info I’ve found for Australia on plastic bags, their sources as litter and their impacts, but their page isn’t referenced. I’ve queried this and been told it was independent research they commissioned, reseach from other organisations, and global research (eg for the 100,000 dead iconic marine species statement).
That single page pretty much refutes all the counter arguments made here. I’d also challenge those who are sceptical on the value of banning/phasing out/etc. plastic bags who worry about behavioural issues to think of other strategies that are as simple and effective in helping retrain people’s behaviour. Because as we seem to all agree that all the other packaging is actually the main game, the challenge is to come up with other ways to change people’s behaviour with regard to that. Plastic bags are an easy first step to demonstrating that our seeming need for plastics and packaging is highly inflated.
Hmm. I find Myriad’s arguments about the need to reduce usage of plastic bags to be compelling. Simultaneously I cannot imagine any practical solution to the garbage problem other than the purchase of an equivalent quantity of bin liners. I’ll just have to hope the rest of you accept Myriad’s arguments too, but don’t have so much garbage to dispose of.
I’m a bit late to this party.
Paul, I question entirely the efficacy of a levy like this in reducing the use of something people see as a necessary product in itself. Richard Pratt and his mates raised an artificial levy of a kind on their packaging products, the extra costs (I understand) being passed largely to consumers. If it’d had the effect of reducing the use of packaging either at the production or shopping stages, there wouldn’t have been any point to price fixing.
From what i have seen above, those who propose a ban on plastic supermarket bags have not come up with a viable alternative to the second, more important part, of mr plastics life.
He is the one that gets the garbage to the non-recyclable wheely bin for those who do not wrap stuff up in old newspapers— and who would waste their money on that garbage anyway— or buy nice new big green, executive strength plastic bags, to do the job.
Anyone who can seriously claim that this proposed ban is a bad thing, needs to get a reality check.
In the next 10-20 years we humans are going to have to modify our behaviour to such an extent that we’ll look back on this ban as trivial.
All the whining and complaining is just a reflection of our overly pampered lives. Cope. Get used to it. Move on.
“Anyone who can seriously claim that this proposed ban is a bad thing, needs to get a reality check.”
Adrian, i am one who is living in the real world but have not found one practical answer to the day to day issues i have raised above.
A couple of issues we should consider:
1) Anyone who’s seen the bumps’n'thumps dished out to boxes at any major warehouse will understand why so many items have unseemly amounts of packaging. We package our instruments carefully and cover them with “delicate” stickers but it makes no difference, so yes there quite often is a reason for the volumes of the stuff. The problem is how much of it is simply made without regard to further use or ability to degrade in a suitable manner.
2) Fully agree with Robert – initiatives like this must concentrate on the most effective way of cleaning up. Many years ago (!) when recycling first started I know many rural councils were sending recycling trucks way out of town to pick up a small recycling bin at the front gate of the farm. The pollution from this easily outweighed the good that was done and more recently they’ve stopped it.
3) Given the plethora of electronics that are discarded (“we must get rid of the old CRT for the new LCD!”) this is much more of a concern long-term as these are known sources of heavy metals. Given component/board level repairs are rare these days the whole item is usually replaced and ends up in one area of the tip. A lot of these “black boxes” are not recyclable.
joe, I’m sure that you are living in the real world, but surely it’s not beyond the realms of human ingenuity for an environmentally sustainable alternative to be found if the ubiquitous plastic version was unavailable.
I’d bet London to a brick, or what remains of my sportingbet account (thanks maxine) that a solution would be marketed pronto. In fact I know a company that would be well placed to develop such an item.
This could well be a good example of the public and private sectors working together for the benefit of us all.
But as I said earlier, in the future this reaction viewed with incomprehension, as in WTF were those whimps in the early 2000s complaining about.
I do have to say that it’s really interesting what amazing stoushes have been launched all over the Internet by the humble plastic bag. And it’s such a non-issue. Really unimportant relatively speaking.
“And supermarkets will still home deliver large orders for those of us who don’t drive.”
Wall to wall home delivery? Not always in rural and regional Australia, Paul.
If you live in some coastal regional areas and come in with the stores own reuseable shopping bags or your own – then you might also be treated as a potential shoplifter and be subject to a bag search.
I like those reuseable bags and would prefer to give up the plastic.
But not if it means I will be constantly harassed by checkout N@zis.
I limit the amount of double wrapped product/produce I buy and, when I shop fortnightly the plasic bags that come home with me are reused as storage containers, unrecyclable rubbish wrappers, dog dropping scoopers.
You can bet your bottom dollar that any future ban by government will be reduced to a levy – so Peter Garrett’s media release was an exercise in futility.
“In fact I know a company that would be well placed to develop such an item.”
Please tell Adrian.
The thing that annoys me most about this debate is that one side keeps saying.. “we just have to do it”.. but does not come up with any real, tangible, solutions to deal with the fallout of the banning of supermarket plastic bags.
I honestly believe that a blanket ban will make the situation worse and is greenwash.
Jenny,
happily talking practical specifics for a second. I compost, which not only reduces my rubbish by about 30%, but also removes the vast, vast majorit of ‘icky’ stuff that I’d otherwise put in the bin – so I haven’t used bin liners for some time. If I have something wet I need to dispose of, including my niece’s regrettable disposable nappies or the greasy wrapper off the dog’s “dog log”, I wrap them in newspaper. I also keep my bin in the house small and regularly emptied. It takes us (admittedly a small household of two) over a month to have enough rubbish to bother putting out the council-provided wheelie bin. By contrast recycling happens fortnightly.
So our unlined kitchen bin is emptied into the larger bin, and being largely absent of smelly ‘wet’ things, is ok to sit outside for a month before emptying. I give it a good scrub out if it starts to get smelly (a bucket of water from the shower or bath in my case).
I haven’t found that any of this has inconvenienced us with anything undesirable like smells etc. Composting all your food waste obviously makes a significant difference here.
food for thought.
People keep bringing up the ‘use newspapers’ furphy forgetting that a lot of people no longer buy papers!
And, anyway, shouldn’t newspapers go into the recycling crates because of the ink on them, and to save teh trees?
Who has got an alternate suggestion for dog poo bags (everyone in my area uses shopping bags)? Or do we go back to leaving it on the street?
That assumes that you have space to compost, which given the increasing amount of medium and high density housing, is an option not available to many people. Also not everyone buys the paper, many preferring to get their news from online sources instead. Hey maybe they should put a levy on newspapers as well to encourage people to get their information from their computers instead.
Wot myriad said.
And I’d add that a worm farm is a fantastic form of composting and many of the commercially available kits are even suitable for a small balcony.
Stop your carping folks!
Even if people don’t buy a friggin’ newspaper, everyone gets constant junk mail including catalogues, free local paper etc etc on a daily basis. Try using this instead, as it happens to be made of the same material as your newspaper.
In attempt to save paper wastage, Adrian, I have a plaque on my letter box which reads ‘Australia Post Mail Only’ and it works.
Yeah … I know I’m being petty but with the Internet filters, plastic bags and weighing 4yos, I’ve just about had enough of this govt already. They are heading for one term has beens if they are not careful.
Hey, Sans Blog, sorry i did mention “greenwash” but please do not derail this thread. I reckon your first sentence is spot on and deserves consideration because it is about the issue at hand.
Adrian, I am surprised you are not advocating a ban on junk mail – surely a waste of resources in our consumption obsessed society. And to think of the greenhouse gas emissions generated in its production! I think you have just shown yourself to be a complete environmental vandal.
But seeker why would I advocate that. As I have shown, junk mail can be used for a useful purpose and can at least be recycled.
By any objective measure uneccesary plastic bags are a far greater environmental hazard.
What I think is at the heart of these petty objections is an intense dislike by some people of being told what to do by government.
Well get used to it folks. You ‘aint seen nothing yet.
Incidentally Sans Blog, I’ve got a plaque on my letterbox that reads ‘Fuck Off You Bastards’ and it doesn’t work. Maybe I should try the diplomatic approach.
Adrian, SB: While I was letterboxing for the Federal election I saw a house that had two letterboxes, one marked “Addressed Mail” and the other marked “Other Mail”. The addressed letterbox was identical to the “Other” box, except that “Other” was open on the bottom, placed above the householder’s paper recycling tub.
Adrian, it is heartening to see that there are still some people around who like being told what to do by government. After all, governments around the world have a strong track record of knowing what’s best for their citizens better than the citizens themselves (central planning anyone?) There are, however, other people who, on being told what to do, may tell the government where to go in four years. Thankfully, that is the nature of the democratic process.
yer Liam,
“There ain’t half been some clever bastards.
Now that we’ve had some,
let’s hope that there’s lots more to come.”
Ian Dury.
seeker, I don’t believe that I used the word ‘like’, or implied that I had an opinion one way or another, other than the fact that such intervention will become increasingly inevitable and intrusive as the world changes beyond your recognition.
And here we are arguing about plastic bags and light bulbs.
How many bloggers does it take to change a light bulb?
What light bulb?
“And here we are arguing about plastic bags and light bulbs.”
adrian, i do not think you understand what some people are trying to say.
It is the implementation of ‘feel good nonsense’ that distracts from real moves to address global warming and it might help to call it for what it seems to be.
A ban on plasic bags without a viable alternative may actually make matters worse.
it the utter tokenism, populism of it all, without a sound rationale, that i don’t like.
If there’s a good reason for government to act, I applaud it. I was quite happy with new efficiency standards for light globes (doesn’t affect me one whit, haven’t bought an incandescent in years). But this plastic bag ban is feel good nonsense that is going to inconvenience me and not change my plastic consumption, I’ll just buy bin liners. So it’s idiotic.
Of course I understand what people are trying to say, I just happen to disagree with them.
If only 5% of these bags ended up in the oceans (it’s a lot more) it would be worth banning them, irrespective of the other environmental hazards that their production entails.
I actually think that you do not understand what I am saying, but I’ll spell it out again for those wilfully unable to understand:
1. The small sacrifice that not using these bags entails is worth it for the environmental benefits;
2. In the urgent environmental crisis in which we find ourselves we haven’t got time to wait for people to voluntarily decide to abandon their use;
3. Labelling it ‘feel good nonsense’ is in itself nonsense because banning these bags will have real and lasting environmental benefits which some people are wilfully ignoring.
At the most practical level, adrian, please explain how nonrecyclable rubbish will not end up all over the road when the garbage man dost cometh without some kind of liner. I have tried it, promise.
joe2, I do the same with my rubbish as myriad. All organic matter into the compost or fed to the chooks, recyclables recycled (incidentally, there are no plastic bags containing the recycling and it doesn’t get scattered about in the collection process) and the very small quantity of non-recyclable rubbish in the actual bin gets put in there loose. It doesn’t end up lying on the street.
That’s actually against the by-laws in many local govt areas.
For example Brisbane City Council:
http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/BCC:BASE::pc=PC_2615
Well they may have to change their by-laws. Yawn.
Good point San Blog.
And Lucy we are great composters of most vegetable matter. As i said before loose material in the non re-cyclable bin has proved problematical for us. You must have a garbo with the gentle touch. It isn’t much fun picking up tampons, meatscraps and a franger etc while people smile and wave.
I can’t believe the hysteria over this. The proposal is merely to stop externalising the cost of the plastic bags (I’d say internalising, as it’s presently included in the price, but I bow to economic language), so you can pick them up for 10c or 20c at the checkout if you need them. Therefore,Wilful, the world as you know it won’t end; if you genuinely need the bags for your rubbish, then, you just get them instead of bringing the green bags..
Nothing changes, except that the cost of your bags is on the bags instead of in the cost of the milk, bread, and other items you’re buying. Oh, the rest of us escape the cost if we bring our green bags, but it’s probably still less than the bin liner bags you said you’d be forced to buy.
Hell, Helen, we are not hysterical, yet.
Just verging on it.
If you are happy to change a system that kind of works give us a very good reason to do it and provide a viable alternative.
Symbolic gestures are futile unless they make practical sense.
It’s more than symbolic if (1) millions of plastic bags are given out because the seller did not think to ask whether one was required and (2) the consumer is required to think about the acquisition of said bags rather than simply mindlessly suck them up.
joe2, anything nasty generally gets stuffed inside an empty corn chips bag or similar item. The kitchen rubbish bin is not much bigger than that anyway and it gets emptied every night. We don’t have any of those items in our garbage, though
God, what an absorbing subject. Anyone hanging out for a more metaphorically dense investigation of the topic of the fate of household waste should read Underworld, or Our Mutual Friend.
And our local council don’t require loose rubbish to be bagged – they say “To protect the health and safety of staff who collect your garbage, please make sure your rubbish bins do not contain unwrapped broken glass, ashes, bricks, concrete or dust.”
“(2) the consumer is required to think about the acquisition of said bags rather than simply mindlessly suck them up.”
I am thinking another imposte, on the poor, to salve the conscience of those who know best. Enjoy that with your GST suckers.
joe, I’m afraid you are becoming a rather mindless bore on this particular subject.
Get over it, as they say.
Does this mean you disagree with my opinion, adrian, on this matter or you would prefer to abuse me personally?
Of course any regressive cost is a concern Joe2, but at 10c/20c a bag – and that’s only if you forget to bring them with you – I can’t get too excited about it. I’d rather address the problem of poor people being forced out to remote suburbs with no transport, and therefore needing to run multiple cars. The second/third car would pay for a LOTTA bags.
Strange that there has been very little discussion on this thread about biodegradable plasic or corn starch bags. Does anybody know what the story is on those forms of technology? When i saw the former at the supermarket i thought we had a brand new day. Sadly, it lasted just about a week.
Now it looks like our new environment minister is likely to create a rush for large black and green industrial strength wheely bin bags that will set back land fill arrangements bigtime.
http://www.compostablepackaging.co.uk – a major player in the European packaging world, and currently distributing in the middle east. If Iran, Israel and Bahrain can do it…