Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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; }
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!
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.