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EU Plastic Bag Debate Highlights a Wider Global Problem
jones_supa writes "An EU citizen uses around 200 plastic bags per year. That's too much, says the EU. But wasting plastic bags is not just a European problem. Countries around the world are struggling with the issue, and it especially affects growing economies such as Asia. Some Southeast Asian countries don't even have the proper infrastructure in place to dispose of the bags properly. The problems for the environment are many. Plastic bags usually take several hundred years until they decay, thereby filling landfills, while animals often mistake the plastic for food and choke to death. Additionally they are a major cause of seaborne pollution, which is a serious hazard for marine life. This autumn, EU started ambitious plans which aim to reduce usage 80% by 2017. Some countries have already applied measures to slow plastic bag use: England has added a 5p charge to previously free bags, and in Ireland the government has already imposed a tax of 22 euro cents ($0.29) per plastic bag. The EU Environment Commissioner, Janez Potonik, said, 'We're taking action to solve a very serious and highly visible environmental problem.'"
In England the government has said that a 5p charge will come in 2015 AFTER THE NEXT ELECTION. Too early to count chickens.
Korma: Good
This gets fixed by developing a better bag. Better means comparable cost and strength, with handles and environmentally safe.
Jumping straight away to a tax makes it look like nothing more than a money grab.
Ok, so plastic bags in the grocery stores here in Finland have cost somewhere between 15-30 Euro cents for, well forever. I could get a proper cloth grocery bag to reuse, or buy paper bags instead, but I choose not to. Why? I use those plastic bags for my trash!
So if I did go cloth or, heaven forbid, paper, I'd still have to buy plastic bags to put in my trash cans. It doesn't matter if I buy them separately or on a roll, I'm going to keep buying those plastic bags until I come up with a better way to get rid of my trash.
She: Hey, are you a traitor? Me: No, I'm atheist.
I started using re-usable bags and a backpack when I started having to hike to the nearest supermarket. You can fit more in them, you don't even notice the backpack, and the handles don't turn into cheese wire after thirty seconds with a moderate load. Mine even have a folding fibreboard base so you can fill them more easily. Once you get past the initial investment - and small policy nudges should take care of that - the convenience makes the switch worthwhile all on its own.
Car owners: do you use plastic crates? Safeway here used to offer them when it had a scan-as-you-go self-service system and I'm surprised they didn't take off more generally.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Waste is a massive problem. And it has a trivial solution. Mandate that all packaging be recyclable, and marked for recycling. If it's not marked for recycling, prohibit sale and require the packages to be destroyed or returned to the country of origin. Anything not recyclable must be compostable and clearly marked as such. Finally, all plastic bags must be rapidly UV-degrading and compostable, full stop. That outright solves the problem of plastic bag forests. You don't need to charge a premium, which does absolutely nothing to mitigate the problem of the bags which ARE thrown away, and only an idiot would believe that the majority of the population will take good care of plastic sacks because they cost them 5p a piece. Requiring a more expensive bag will have the effect of making the bags more expensive anyway; some retailers will roll the cost into the cost of their products, and some of them will charge the customer. Either way, the free market is completely capable of solving this problem with the proper guidance, which is NOT a fee.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The first half of the following seems to be the important part:
First, Member States are required to adopt measures to reduce the consumption of plastic carrier bags with a thickness below 50 microns, as these are less frequently reused than thicker ones, and often end up as litter. Second, these measures may include the use of economic instruments, such as charges, national reduction targets, and marketing restrictions (subject to the internal market rules of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU).
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?
This discussion needs a soundtrack and we're so lucky that the perfect one already exists. I'm of course talking about one of the most "what do you mean it's not awesome?" pieces of music ever made, Canvas Bags by Tim Minchin.
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
Paper bags.
Paper is bad for the environment as well. We should invent e-bags!
Paper bags.
For most Americans this is hard to visualise but many Europeans walk to the supermarket. The bag has to be carry-able with handles, survive getting wet, and support a reasonable amount of weight.
Alternatives are already widely deployed in Europe. By shifting the price of the dominant option, you change people's buying patterns towards those alternatives. Simples economics.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
From the summary, "Plastic bags usually take several hundred years until they decay..."
This is technically incorrect. Plastic bags have not existed for even fifty years, let alone a hundred or several hundred. Based on the best research and scientific modeling, materials scientists expect that plastic bags will remain for hundreds of years before they degrade, but that is an educated conjecture, not an observed fact.
Even tests done in ways to simulate time are by definition, simulations. They may well be accurate, but there have been times where scientific conjectures were later discovered to be either incorrect or else in need of modification to correct inaccuracies. This isn't to downplay the problems with the bags, but excessive assumptions only lead to someone else being able to counter one's arguments.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
In some countries, vendors "mark" clients with the bags. If you are a tough negotiator for the lowest price, you get a different colour plastic bag than if you are a western tourist who pays the first sum asked.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Is it just me that's struggling to see how a 'solution' is to charge people more for something they already use? Surely we aren't going to stop using them because we get a charge added on, more likely we'll get more frustrated at the cost of the groceries bought since our total bill is higher because of the bag-tax.
The idea is that people will switch to reusable bags and bring them to the supermarket.
Isn't there a better solution, different chemicals used in the bag 'technology', alternatives (The USA used paper bags for many years, why is that such a bad solution?)
Paper bags are hard to hold from the top and can't stand getting wet. Try carrying half-a dozen paper bags to the bust stop in the rain and you will see why they don't work so well in Europe.
You are right to say compostable. Merely biodegradable usually means that there are a lot of harmful chemicals after the degrading process.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Not always. The price of fuel has skyrocketed in recent years, and most people do not commute on a daily basis further than the range of an electric car, but even households with more than one car (where the other can remain petroleum-powered) have not switched over to electric cars for at least one vehicle. Demand remains low enough that most automakers have only begrudgingly developed electric cars as governments have required them, and even then, only distribute them in limited numbers and only to the absolute minimum requirements.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
And handle all of this without any underwear-loss incidents...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
That's if they know the higher cost is because of the bag. If the cost is hidden in the total grocery bill, then the blame for that cost will be shifted to the store.
Look, most people use these bags because they are there, usually free and they are in a hurry. Until the reusable bags are given away as freely you will continue to see plastic bag usage no matter the cost.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
The cost is always attached to the bag, in my experience. Unless there are some nations taxing supermarkets per bag used or something I don't know about.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Paper suffers from that same problem in a lot of places.
But grocery stores, at least where I'm at, have been selling re-usable bags with handles for years. We've got a bunch of them we've been using for at least 3-4 years. They also charge 5 cents/plastic bag to make people less interested in using them, and I think even offer a small discount per re-usable bag.
We still occasionally end up with plastic for one reason or another, but we find out re-usable bags hold a LOT more than the store plastic bags, and are far more durable (and machine washable despite being made out of recycled plastic bottles).
As much as I can, I don't want to get too many plastic bags. They do come in handy for small garbage bags and the like, but on balance, you'll accumulate a lifetime supply in a relatively short period.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
What if the shift was on the car itself not the fuel(people can be funny about thinking things through). What if there was a 20% increase applied to traditional cars that was not applied to alternative cars.
That's because electric cars inherently cost a small fortune. (And will do until technology improves.) The barrier to entry is large enough that you'd need a much larger economic incentive before people were willing to switch.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Its all a conspiracy / major government lobbying effort by the plastic garbage trash can liner people and the cloth bag manufacturers to increase their sales.
I personally hate most of the plastic liner bags my wife buys. They tend to rip much more easily than the plastic shopping bags and they frequently don't have the handy handles to tie them up with. I try to reuse the plastic bags from grocery shopping whenever I can. Anytime you can do double duty with one product its a win in my book.
I live in Brazil and sometimes I walk to the market.
Some upper end markets here give you a paper bag with handles, like this one:
http://blogs.estadao.com.br/curiocidade/files/2012/03/sacola_papel_SantaLuzia-682x1024.jpg
I prefer those to plastic ones. They easily handle 10kg(about 25 lbs, for americans), where the plastic ones barely get 2kg(5 lbs) without punctures. Also they are very sturdy, and survive minor rain.
With two of those paper bags I can take the equivalent of ten or more plastic bags, and they don't hurt my fingers like the plastic ones do.
Five years ago I was on a beach outside Malaga, Spain, about to take a swim in the sea. Diving under water I suddenly saw hundreds of more or less colored plastic bags floating around at different depths, like jellyfish. The sea was apparently full with those, at least along the coastline, to a degree. Some sort of tide bringing these I guess. Needless to say, the swimming experience was not particularly appealing suddenly and was cut short. It was disgusting. I am not really sure how to fix this problem today, but a price tag on each bag and a penalty for disposing of trash in inappropriate locations in general seem like a start to me.
It's a question of customer service. If you make me pay for a bag, by removing the free alternatives and selling your own, then I'll avoid your store if I can. You know why? Any large supermarket recycles or throws about tons of empty cardboard boxes every month. You could stack them by the door, let me take them conveniently from where I have to pack my purchase into a trolley / basket, and they'd get re-used (much better than recycling). There are some shops that do this (shout-out to Trago Mills). They don't charge for boxes, they do for bags. They have lots of boxes just sitting there. And they have done for years. When I was a kid, supermarkets all did this. Now they don't. The ones that do are the rare exceptions. Probably some crappy health-and-safety or even recycling-backhander in play. Fact is that I'd rather take a used, strong, perfectly-sized cardboard box from a pile than do anything with bags at all. If I go into your shop and buy things, I need to take them out of your shop. If you're going to make me pay to take them out, I'll buy less. Just "to make a statement", nothing to do with the money. And if you're really insistent, I have a very bad memory so never remember to bring my "own" bags (which you expect me to have paid for at some point), so what I'll do is roll the trolley out into the car park, empty it into the car, and take it out at home. No bag for you, more hassle for me. I could buy my own "trolley", like some old British women do, but why would I? I don't want to spend money to help me spend money. All of which means I won't come to your shop for small purchases and other times. Shopping trolleys were invented in order to make sure people could carry enough goods home that they didn't have to worry about what they bought and hence they would buy more. If I have to think about how many bags I have and where they are and whether I have to grab them in the morning to do a shop after work, etc. then I'm not going to go elsewhere. I've done this recently after the last supermarket in the area moved to a "coin deposit" trolley system. I rarely carry cash, and when I have it I won't remember to bring change on my shopping trip. And I probably don't have a pound coin even when I do have a pound in change. So it's just an inconvenience. As far as I'm concerned it's like DRM. You're getting in my way as an honest customer in order to fight against some mythical trolley thieves that you'd be better off just putting a security guard on the exit from the car park to stop. I've been back to that shop once since. I took a basket because I didn't have a pound coin on me and had forgotten about the new system. I bought a handful of things, then my arms got tired, so I paid and put it straight back into the car and drove off. Haven't been back. It has nothing to do with money, ecology or the environment. If you're going to inconvenience me, you're not providing proper customer service. There are ways out that are really simple and tie in very nicely with the way you run your business and dispose of packaging yourself. But you choose to inconvenience me, and force me to pre-plan all shopping trips (which works against you, I spend more when I have no idea what I have in my fridge, have lots of strong bags, etc.). I've got the message. I'll shop elsewhere. Get this: I'd rather go elsewhere if you charge me for bags and provide no alternatives. Even with a car. Even with 100GBP weekly shopping trips. Even with strong arms and no disabilities. Is that worth the pence you save by charging me for bags, recycling your boxes, or not having a trolley wander off? P.S. After a month of the new system, your trolleys now allow you to remove the pound coin without needing to replace it in the lines of trolleys because the internal mechanisms are so weakened (presumably through sheer wear or forcible removal)... lots of money well spent there on pissing me off.
Some do, mostly "low cost" stores
And if you look at the places that have introduced the charge, such as M&S, many have adopted a "small bag is free, full size bags are charged" policy as well, presumably in response to negative feedback from customers.
Some other curious data points on this issue, which isn't nearly as black-and-white as it might seem:
For one thing, it turns out that lots of people do "recycle" those "disposable" plastic bags. When Ireland introduced a tax on plastic bags, bin liner purchases increased by 400%.
For another thing, while plastic bags are more environmentally unfriendly than paper bags when discarded, they are more efficient to transport in large numbers, and in practice that inefficiency translates rather directly into increased pollution, greater consumption of non-renewable fuel types for vehicles, and so on. The facts about resources used and pollution generated in manufacture aren't entirely one-sided either.
If the government really wanted to help the environment, they could politely encourage supermarkets to start selling the actually good reusable plastic bags that at least Sainsbury's and Tesco had a few years ago, which were much larger and tougher than the jokes they sell as reusable today (OK, you can reuse them, maybe two or three times before they fall apart). These actually seemed to be quite popular at the time, and we still use some of ours many years later, but the supermarkets that had them all switched to a different and much inferior type after a relatively short time; I don't know why.
In addition, far more environmental good would be done if the government slapped a significant tax on all packaging materials at the source, so that using excessive or unnecessary packaging carried a direct financial penalty. This step alone would almost certainly cut the volume of environmentally unfriendly waste -- meaning waste that can't be recycled or otherwise dealt with other than sending it to landfill -- more than even making all single-use bags of any type completely illegal.
So whenever you see a government official of whatever political affiliation making some claim about helping the environmental by taxing the supply of plastic bags, you should immediately ask what their real agenda is. If they're not also advocating more general restrictions on packaging, and they're not also advocating restricting other environmentally unfriendly practices such as supplying one-time paper bags when reusable bags could be used, then they're probably hiding some ulterior motive and/or capitalizing on some political talking point of the day.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
200 plastic bags is under a kilo of plastic, compared to the food packaging (especially for micromeals) it's negligable. In terms of carbon footprint, it's impact is tiny and barely any better than re-usable bags.
Rather than using it to raise funds, how about mandating supermarkets to use biodegradable/compostable materials instead? Better yet, make supermarkets do "litter patrol" like they do in England with McDonalds.
I clearly remember a science project where some teenager bred bacteria that could break down plastic bags in about three weeks. It won somebody's science fair project and everything.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I came in here and searched for "photo" and found your post, because this was my first thought.
Photodegradable bags are the answer, easy. They're already the norm in many places.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I'm actually OK with being charged for the bags if the money collected is allocated to a system that actually addresses a direct bag created issue such as upgrading recycling facilities to better handle them so they don't just go into landfills. What I am against in a general sin tax on bags that goes and funds whatever it is the government wants to fund with the money collected.
I've had them overflowing with 12oz glass bottles I'm taking back to the store and the bags have survived multiple trips. I've had more issues with the handles on plastic bags ripping apart.
Recycling is a non-issue. And get this, it promotes the growth of more trees which will be used for paper.
We should invent e-bags!
You joke, but we get a weekly delivery of fresh fruit and vegetables from a service that sources most of the produce locally. It all comes in a wooden or plastic crate, and when they deliver each week they take away the now-empty crate from the previous time. Total waste, washing, or other hassle involved on our side: 0.
Obviously this doesn't work for all produce you buy at the store, but part of the problem in this debate is the assumption that any kind of bag is a good starting point. Bags basically suck as a way of carrying your shopping home. We just haven't figured out how to shift to a better plan quick enough yet, so it can become established before consumers who hate change kill it by taking their business to stores that didn't make the jump and thus penalise those that did.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Not always. The price of fuel has skyrocketed in recent years, and most people do not commute on a daily basis further than the range of an electric car, but even households with more than one car (where the other can remain petroleum-powered) have not switched over to electric cars for at least one vehicle
Well, there are also a few other issues like (a) the problem of how to re-charge overnight if you don't have a garage/driveway (or if the garage/driveway is occupied by your second car) or (b) the sky-high price of EVs that makes it touch-and-go whether you'll ever save any money c.f. a modern, economical gasoline car - especially if you need a loan to raise the purchase price and/or pay a lease for the batteries. Plus, you can always walk, cycle or take the bus (maybe not so much in the US).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Here in Denmark bags cost 40 p (3.5 DKK, 0.5 €). I can assure you you start thinking twice before throwing 3 on the belt!
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Some Southeast Asian countries don't even have the proper infrastructure in place to dispose of the bags properly.
Do they have the proper infrastructure in place to dispose of the bags improperly?
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
Well, I don't know about you, but I hardly need bags for general waste any more.
All food waste either goes into my own compost, or into the green wheelie bin for composting by the council -- my council now accepts meat and cooked leftovers.
Paper, cardboard, metal, glass and plastic packaging goes in a recycling box for kerbside collection.
That leaves a very small amount of other waste, to go in the grey wheelie bin. It's seldom a quarter-full when the fortnightly collection day comes. There's just no need for bags, because it's all dry.
If you feel you need trash bags, you should pay for them. You can either pay for carrier bags, which you then re-use as trash bags, or (cheaper) buy a roll of actual trash bags.
The plastic bag used to be known as South Africa's 'National Flower'. Since the law was passed, circa 2008 IIRC, the level of plastic litter has plummeted. This works.
Oh yeah the law is that stores are obliged to charge for plastic bags. The price is something like R0.20 -- ~2 cents US / ~1.5 pence
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We have about 5 reusable bags.
We usually remember them when we go shopping, and I actually do prefer them over plastic, because they can carry more, have a more comfortable handle,
However what I can see as a way to get better use is doing the following.
1. Modify the shopping carts to have a good place to store them while shopping. I tend to stuff it on the bottom, however if I have a big item (aka Cat litter) I have to do a lot of shifting around. Having the spot available is also a note that the store actually encourages reusable bags.
2. Reusable bag, returns, You return your bags to the store, where they can be properly cleaned/replaced if damaged. Then when you go to the checkout you get some clean bags.
3. Generic bags. Lets not use them as as an advertising platform. you want bags that you can use tastefully at any store.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The problem with well intended programs is that most of them have a lack of follow through in their chain of events.
I recall when early in my career I worked in a fair size office building that had a cafeteria on the premises. In the cafeteria you were presented with an assortments of recycling options where you could recycle everything from organic waste to making sure that green glass was separated from brown.
When I worked the first shift I would watch as everyone dutifully separated everything just so to make sure they were being good for the environment. I was then transferred to second shift after a while at which point I noticed that every single evening the janitor took every single bin and dumped them all into the same garbage dolly.
The same thing happens with many recycling programs where the materials are simply shipped to Africa or China. They are then disassembled by hand as they value the money more than the computer, often by small kids and certainly without any kind of environmental controls. In order to put an end to e-waste you really have to start forcing in country recycling programs where the materials are completely broken down.
Is it just me that's struggling to see how a 'solution' is to charge people more for something they already use?
At least in the UK, the big supermarkets are already making quite a bit of progress*: they have racks of cheap re-usable bags prominently displayed by the till, sometimes with 'bag for life' free replacement deals, and give extra loyalty card points for customers who bring their own bags.
Charging for bags isn't going to make any significant financial impact on anybody, but the mere existence of a charge for something that was once free might be just enough to nudge people into changing their habits (remember to stuff the bags back into the car when you've finished unpacking - it's not a big deal). Having the charge mandated by government as a 'tax on bags' helps prevent any one company trying to get an advantage by offering free bags.
Maybe it will work better in UK/Europe, where displayed prices for consumer goods are always inclusive of tax and 'what you see is what you pay' compared with the US where consumers are used to sales tax and other random 'state surcharge evaluation fee assessment contribution' surcharges materialising at the checkout.
(* apart from the local Spar which was fairly recently re-fitted with a brilliant checkout design dependent on the plastic bag dispenser that completely fails if the shopper brings their own bag - it does mean they fit 6 checkouts in the space previously occupied by 3, which would be fine and dandy if they ever had more than 3 employees in the shop).
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
The charge is turning the previously externalized cost of disposing of plastic bags into a paid cost. And that will change what market players do in order to reduce the number of bags being disposed. The cost of you using plastic bags doesn't go away just because you don't pay for them.
And we're talking about the not-giant burden of bringing your own bags when you go shopping. All that takes is a small amount of advanced planning. Oh, and you end up with less trash.
I am officially gone from
Maybe the reason some of us haven't gotten an electric is because we currently have working vehicles that are owned outright and cost very little to keep going. When my wife's car starts having issues it will get replaced by an electric but that is going to be a while since she puts about 6,000 miles on it a year. She is the perfect case for an electric car like a Leaf since a lot of driving for her in a day is 40 miles and she typically drive about 6. But The money save by giving up a perfectly good vehicle that is basically fully depreciated to get an electric at this point doesn't make sense but in 5 or so year it probably will if her car starts having problems.
Time to offend someone
In Alpes-Maritimes district actually, it's been kinda solved by forbidding regular super/hypermakets to provide such plastic bags. Only bigger re-usable plastic bags are allowed and they are not free either. It's been that way for almost a decade. Some shops can also sell you some rather-cheap (about 1€) fabric bags.
I usually bring my own bags. Sometimes I forget, or don't bring enough. I have a few collapsible cardboard boxes in my trunk. So, I can just cart the bagless goods to the car in the cart, and load them into the boxes or bags for easier carrying into the house. However, it's not possible to avoid all instances where I may need bags to carry out items. When I do I opt for plastic.
It's not a big deal for me -- I just collect them and return them. The grocery store in my neighborhood recycles the bags. I don't use paper bags for sanitary reasons: That's where those little cockroaches come from (at least in my neck of the woods). I can stand the big variety that come in from outside, but I'd rather not have to fumigate with harsh chemicals again just because I used paper bags brought insect eggs into my abode. Want to see something interesting? Next time you bring paper bags home, dampen them a bit then put them in clear plastic bags, and watch the infestation emerge. Careful, they can eat through plastic, so use a sturdy bag. As a rational person, I of course needed evidence to back my shopping bag preference. YMMV.
Most Americans can't visualize it because of a 20th century invention called the "subdivision". That's where a property developer takes a large tract of land, builds a couple of hundred houses on it, with twisty streets so you can't see more than a couple of blocks away, and limits access to the main roads in one or two places (a specific variant called a pod subdivision), thus meaning most people have to go a mile or two through the maze just to get out of the subdivision.
All business development is along the main road. If you are lucky, a supermarket will build at that intersection. If you aren't lucky, the supermarket is a few miles down the main road, and you get a "convenience store", which is small and has a limited inventory for twice the price. If you are driving, it isn't too far, but you can't just cut across other people's yards when walking, because all the houses get a fenced-in back yard when they are built. In any case, the businesses get a fence between them and the houses to prevent, um, "unsavory persons" from having an easy way in and out, usually mandated by zoning laws*. The walk thus becomes far enough that it's not worth the bother, and you just get in the car to go those three to five miles. And your place of employment is going to be nowhere nearby, so it's not like it's along your way when you were already walking.
Europe, like older US cities, usually in the northeast, was built up long enough ago before this became common.
tl;dr: Most modern American neighborhoods are designed to be actively hostile to pedestrians trying to get anywhere.
*actually zoning is probably the real cause of why subdivisions exist
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
The number of shopping bags used as bin liners is vastly smaller than the shopping bags that end up as rubbish. Hence the additional number of bin liners purchased is a small fraction of the reduction in shopping bags when bans/taxes/fees are brought in. (At least according to people who track such things, when such a ban was introduced here in my part of Australia.)
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
From the link: But the degrading microbes are difficult to isolate because they do not exist in high numbers in nature.
Like you said, "favorable conditions". Not guaranteed in a landfill, where the specific bacteria that degrade plastic bags still have to compete with all the other bacteria.
Make it your responsibility to buy the bin liners. Typical rolls last a long time, so buying three/four at a time should be only an occasional chore. This replaces a daily or twice daily eye-rolling annoyance with a once-per-quarter-year 5 minute chore one day on your way to/from work.
[Your wife must be buying shit brands if they rip more easily than typical thin shopping-bags. Ditto if they don't have handles. Hell, I have to go out of my way to avoid the brands with handles and ties and a stupid draw-string.]
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
In Winnipeg (Canada), charging for bags - or even simply flat out not supplying them (MEC), has resulted in such a drop in small, convenient shopping bags that we (re)used for garbage bags, that we now have to explicitly buy garbage bags (for small waste bins like in the bathrooms).
Also, yard waste used to be dropped off at certain depots - and large plastic bags were king. Now, it is collected at the curb side - but only if in PAPER yard waste bags. We had stocked up on the large garbage bags for yard waste before the switch, and I fear we now have a lifetime supply of paint smocks, emergency rain coats, vapour barrier material, etc....
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
It isn't just sea turtles and waterfowl. On my way to work yesterday I looked into a field and saw a cow munching on a plastic bag that had blown into its pasture. We should eliminate plastic bags. I've already stopped accepting them at stores -- I always carry a messenger bag with me where I put all of my purchases (think globally, act locally).
Religion is poison to rationality, and we lose sight of that at our own peril. -- Lurker2288
Tesco bags don't even need to be left in the sun. Use one to hold a few things together, put it in your loft for storage, and when you try to take it down it will have broken down into 5 to 8 millimetre fragments which seem to carry an electric charge, judging by the way they stick to things.
Perhaps it would be possible to grow a brew of landfill-friendly bacteria and spray it on the pile once in a while.
Oh yeah. That would cause problems for the people who make a living digging through landfills for a living.
Have gnu, will travel.
Where do you get those braziliun years lasting plastic bags ?
I tended to store stuff in my workshop in hung plastic bags. They usually fall to dust (because of sun's UV from the window) in less than 6 month dropping all their content to the floor...
it makes more sense to simply design the bags to be multipurpose, multi-use.
Frankly, ALL packaging should be designed this way.
All the tax does is waste money and put it towards nothing of any significance.
200 plastic bags per year just isn't that many bags. If you can't recycle them for some reason then dump them in a landfill. If your neck of the woods doesn't have a lot of landfill space, then ship that junk to where there is a lot of landfill space (for example, eastern Europe and Africa). The problem has been solved for centuries.
When I read of European environmental concerns, I'm struck by the immaturity and irrationality of it and proposed solutions. It's a waste of time and effort. How about finding ways to make peoples' lives better instead?
why not actually ENFORCE littering laws
also
http://www.amazon.com/T-Shirt-Carryout-Bags--Thank-Gracias/dp/B0025W9ALG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385566969&sr=8-1&keywords=carryout+bags
2.5 cents each
...why are they so cheap?
Seriously, if these are petroleum products, and petro products are finite, why are they so cheap? Or are they made of petro-fractions that are otherwise nearly worthless?
-Styopa
Zoning, like many things in law, is a fundamentally sound idea but also one that can be easily exploited and abused by the politically well-connected.
Initial cost is a large part of the problem. Electric cars are still a lot more expensive than IC cars.
Also, even people who mostly commute do like the option of occasional longer trips. Especially in the US, where the car is as much a symbol of personal freedom and independence as it is a practical means of transportation.
In The Netherlands supermarkets have been charging for plastic bags for ages.
However, most also provide cardboard boxes for free. They would have to pay to dispose of them so giving them away to customers is mutually beneficial.
In Canada, if you aren't using a cloth/reusable bag, you're just that fucking dude who didn't bring a bag. Almost everywhere asks and charges before handing you one. The only exception, as others have pointed out, is if you just need garbage bags and want them cheap.
equal most instances of food borne illness and more food waste, specifically for wrappers, containers not bags as was mention in TFS.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Right. I'm the submitter and also later realized that Slashdot had eaten the character. The person's correct name can be read from his EU Commission homepage.
Heck... I never actually counted them but I'd bet the grocery stores around here were using 200 bags/month for my groceries before we went to reusable cloth bags. It was nuts the way they used them.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Seems to me that the regulation of plastic bags for shopping is recycling theatre. They are visible and so they get press and political traction. In our house we reuse all our plastic bags and don't even have enough to cover all the uses we have for them. Moreover, when we buy stuff, there is generally a lot more plastic in the annoying packaging of the products that we put in the shipping bags than there is in the bag itself. What is the weight in plastic of the bags compared to all the other plastic we use? The plastic bags are so light compared to the heavy packaging, and all the other cheap consumer products for sale that get put the to dump soon enough. Look at vacuum cleaners these days. All plastic. They only last a year or two and then you have to buy another one. All that needs to be done is to make them slightly degradable -- even 10 years life is short enough.
At work we dump shredded paper or packing chips into plastic bags and the use them like pillows to protect fragile goods we ship. That way, when people get them, the packing stuff doesn't fly all over the floor. We can fill them full, or a bit loose, according to what we need. A quick knot in the handles seals them good enough for the transit.
It's really annoying to have to spend time in a store figuring out the plastic bag policy. I could better put the time into thinking about how to really deal with plastic pollution.
Try to pick up a few things on the way home from work in bag-free areas. Oops, damn, have the wrong car, the bags are in the other car. Fuck. Or you go into the supermarket and realize halfway through you forgot the bags. Or you get all the way up to the checkout and realize you have no bags (or if you're from out of area, learn about this shit the first time).
It's just one of the little things that demonstrate how much government is micromanaging people's lives.
Really? How do you use almost one plastic bag per day? My personal use is maybe 2 per month, whenever I'm shopping and it turns out the bag(s) I brought aren't enough.
And I'm not an eco freak. I don't even seperate my waste. So it really takes very, very little to be considerable under that number, so if that's an average, and I assume most of the eco-minded people are somewhere around my level or even lower, who are the fucking morons who use more than a bag every fucking day ??.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
National Geographic, I believe, had an article/piece where someone took pictures of the contents of bird stomachs. Albatross, you name it, they all like to eat plastic, especially colorful plastic. When they laid out all the pieces found in the stomach of birds, it looked like all the weapons a fighter jet can carry.
I come here for the love
Must be few pet owners on this thread...we re-use all of our plastic bags, no problem!
I come here for the love
Your bog-standard disposable plastic shopping bag, (which DOES get re-used, at least they did in my household, before they were banned in my county), will degrade in about 2-3 years, when exposed to direct sunlight, (UV). When buried, it's a different story.
One of the really damaging plastics out there is large-scale plastic sheeting used for trapping moisture in farming. It's polyethelene, and it stands up to more UV abuse, and they come in sheets hundreds of yards long. When they get blown away or washed out to sea - they definitely cause harm to wildlife. Several beached whales have been found with this crap bunched up and blocking their digestive tracts. The thing is: for shorelines not managed by humans, that whale carcass will rot away, and that plastic sheeting will wash back out into the ocean, and threaten more marine life.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
the rag-pickers recycle them for cash... just ship em all there, recycling and providing some income for the poor.
People call for biodegradable plastic bags. I reuse all the plastic bags I get for garbage, and the city incinerate them. I bet this is quite common in urban areas. In that situation, a bag that burns without releasing toxic compound would just be enough.
Case in point on there being people who insist on washing the bags every time.
I don't read AC A human right
Not really, I think. Remember that they've done studies on all sorts of stuff and they pretty much ALWAYS find bacteria. Heck, our toilets tend to be less contaminated than things like toothbrushes and doorknobs. You'd think we stored our dish scrubbers in the sewer from what's on them. Yet we hardly ever get sick from those exposures.
For that matter, e coli? Yes, it has the potential to make us sick, but it's also an essential part of our digestive tract.
I don't read AC A human right
Electric cars cost considerably more than traditional vehicles, such that the extra cost of the vehicle outweighs the savings made from running it. Electric cars would be good for people who do high mileage, only they don't have sufficient range for that.
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As a child, my parents and I always walked to the store. We bought a little wire-mesh cart with wheels. Problem solved. These days, the grocery store with the least packaging is far enough to make walking infeasible, so the SO and I drive, but we still re-use the same bags (they are not free at our grocery store, but they are cloth and quite durable).
Replying to myself to clarify something I realized in retrospect. We don't go further to simply avoid packaging--this store sells only generic items with minimal packaging, at a fraction of the retail cost of brand names. It means that our grocery bill, even after gas, is approximately 1/3 of what it would be otherwise.
I think we have a winner for todays first world problem.
A first-world solution like an electric car needs a first-world problem.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Fact: It takes a matter of weeks to decompose a grocery bag. Fiction: Drink lots of milk kids. The bovine fatty liquid will make you strong.
He is crazy if you think about it; I am not.
Years ago practically all the grocery stores I went to changed their plastic bags over to a new material which most certainly does not last 100 years - after a year or so they break down so much they turn into confetti. I believe they're awfully cheap to make, too.
If they can do it, how hard can it be?