Plastic fantastic: Bagging the bag baggers
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“More than 4 billion bags were imported in 2007, containing about 22 million tonnes of plastic,” warns the Smage this morn, apparently quoting a “draft” government report on environmental evil incarnate. Well that’s certainly one way to rid supermarkets of plastic bags – each one weighs 5.5 kilos.
Such maths makes one wary of a very lightly-sourced and leaked report whose main claim is almost equally improbable: that Australian plastic bag usage suddenly soared from 3.36 billion in 2006 to 4.84 billion last year. A 44% jump against a declining trend is a bit more than a statistical aberration. But mere numbers and facts don’t get in the way of the anti-bag crusaders desperate to save the planet. Cue Planet Ark et al. And in the plastic bag they have what might be the perfect policy issue for Peter Garrett to grapple with – it gets lots of headlines, sounds good and doesn’t really mean much environmentally at all. Yet Garrett has still managed to make a meal of it with a $1 levy, no levy, maybe a levy, drove my Chevy to the levy etc. Tokenism is a wonderful thing for the green warriors and environment ministers. But before consumers are inconvenienced at a dubious net benefit, it would be nice to see the quality of the “draft” report, to check perhaps if it had any more substance than its 5.5 kilo bags. So far the bag baggers have been big on flawed studies and exaggerated claims. AAP quotes bag supporter Richard Evans, Australian Retailers Association director, thus:
Yes, some people litter and most bags end up in landfill – along with all our other rubbish. I use mine to pick up dog sh*t first, but I’d have to stop that habit if they weighed 5.5 kg. |
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8 Comments
Oh dear, Gerard, eggy face. My zeroes were wrong (should have been 12 for UK billion), and I forgot we were talking tonnes…
Easily solved. The shop charges the customer say .50 cents for each plastic bag and the money goes to environmental organizations e.g. Clean-up Australia,. Nothing to do with food prices, just ‘user pays’ principle. Need a plastic bag, you pay for it..
Pascoe, Devine et al, make a fair argument but no banana. Landfill itself is failed resource management of especially veg/organic (aka putrescible) waste. Plastic bags low priority after peak oil. First step symbolic rejection of throw away CULTURE.
Who said plastic bags were a pollution issue? No, they should not be in litter - but humans do that. They are inert in landfill even reducing greenhouse emissions - according to government reports. If you stop people littering them, where is the problem
Mr Pascoe reflects the approach of the promoters of single use plastic bags; allow us to pollute and let the community pay for the clean up. If he can’t use his ‘free’ bags to pick up his dog’s sh*t leave it for someone else to deal with. Free market sh*t
Plastic bags are a complete distraction. What about the multi-millions spent on Pet Food printing and packaging? We should be targetting all forms of unnecessary packaging for elimination.
Mr Pascoe seems to have used the US (6 zeroes), not the UK/Oz (9 zeroes) billion. Using the latter, 5.5 grams per bag is correct - confirmed it by weighing two bags (one normal, one small) on my electronic scale. Total weight: 11g; average: 5.5g.
The calculated weight of bags that matches the data given is correct - 5.5Kg. This suggests that the base number for the weight of 4 billion bags (22 million tonnes) is clearly wrong. This eceeds the total amount of waste to landfill each year.