Comments on: Plastic fantastic: Bagging the bag baggers

By: Fiona Reynolds

Fiona Reynolds — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Oh dear, Gerard, eggy face. My zeroes were wrong (should have been 12 for UK billion), and I forgot we were talking tonnes…

By: Peggy Balfour

Peggy Balfour — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

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..

By: ecology action

ecology action — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

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.

By: Gerard van Rijswijk

Gerard van Rijswijk — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

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

By: Graham Palmer

Graham Palmer — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

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

By: Connor Moran

Connor Moran — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

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.

By: Fiona Reynolds

Fiona Reynolds — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

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.

By: Gerard

Gerard — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

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.