Enough already about PLASTIC #!!@&* BAGS

[tubs]

I've had enough. Please, NO MORE TALK ABOUT GETTING RID OF PLASTIC BAGS!

Everyone seems to treat it like cutting plastic bag use is going to save the world. Well, it WONT

In fact, its not going to make one scrap of difference. What happens to all the plastic bags now? They end up in landfill. So what;s the problem??? Hey, heaps of other rubbish and crap end up there too. In fact, if you took your average bag of rubbish, and weighed the plastic bag that wraps it, and then weighed the actual rubbish, then surely its obvious there's no issue here. In fact, the plastic bag probably wouldnt even register on anything except the most sensitive scientific scales. Then weigh a tin can, or food wrapper, or a nappy, or, well just about anything else you could throw out. A tissue probably weighs more.

Just one nappy (just ONE) that we throw away at home occupies more weight and space than probably 500 stupid dumb plastic bags. I dont even reckon 0.1% of the content of a landfill would consist of plastic bags.

And even if you ban them, then what happens. People just buy bin liners made out of...PLASTIC! Hey, maybe we can go back to paper bags. Yeah, that'd be great. Lets chop down a rainforest so we can get rid of plastic bags. Or lets not line our bins. Lets chuck all the food scraps straight in there. Of course, its got added benefits if you're obsessed with FLIES and COCKROACHES.

Tell you what else happens. People will probably just pay the levy for the bags anyway unless they buy bin liners. And since everybody needs them at home, everyone's going to pay for them. And when everyone pays a levy to the government, its no longer a levy. ITS A TAX. And who pays the most? The people with the big families who buy HEAPS of stuff at the supermarket and have the most waste. So lets start taxing the people who can least afford it just to make some idealist left wing loonies a little bit happier.

Why dont people get real. Do you think banning bags is going to actually save the environment? I dont remember the last time a species became extinct because of a plastic bag. I dont think the world climate will cool 2 degrees because we dont use plastic bags any more. I sure hope this 'symbol' is a bit more than Rudd is hoping to achieve with the government. Maybe in 10 years time we'll have no water, not be able to go outside in the sunshine and lose half our coast lines, but at least we can say we got rid of plastic bags and what a wonderful gesture it was.

So is banning plastic bags going to achieve anything?

No. Its just going to piss me off.

[Rant off. I feel better now]

 

[wylie]

I actually agree we need SOME plastic bags for rubbish, so sometimes I get my groceries in plastic bags. However, with a family of five, if I didn't use my "green" bags nine times our of ten shopping trips, I would have a cupboard full of plastic bags by the end of the year.

I am all for REDUCING their use so that people (plenty of you out there ) who have a WHOLE kitchen cupboard full of plastic bags still have enough for their rubbish, but don't just throw the unused ones out.

There has to be a middle ground.

 

[tubs]

You can always take them back to the supermarket and re-use them or put them in your recycling bin.

I dont mind reducing the number, but I think the notion of a complete ban is absurd.

 

[wylie]

I do agree with you, but I know that most people will not take them back to the supermarket, and in Brisbane we cannot put them in the recycling bin (according to my fridge magnet anyway).

I certainly agree that if they are banned, we will have to buy plastic bags to put the rubbish in.

 

[steveadl]

Good point Tubs. Can anyone explain why such a big push to get rid of plastic bags?

I understand that if they get into the environment and waterways they can cause problems etc. - but 99.9% of them would end up buried in the landfills as Tubs said.

What's the theory behind the push? Is it because they are an easy target that we can see results from straight away, even if the results don't make much difference?

 

[s_t]

politics......it's a lot of nonsense.

If the bags aren't underground, they'd be exposed to the sun - which will break them down soon enough.....

 

[Pushka]

John Dee (PLanet Ark) was banging on the radio the other day that in a European study somewhere, they found tons of plastic in fish they had autopsied. The interviewer, who had read the research report very well, said that plastic shopping bags had actually contributed very little to the volume of rubbish they had found, but that it was the type of plastic associated with the fishing Industry. The first time the interviewer queried Dee about this, he totally avoided the question. So the interviewer repeated the question again, and he got very cross with her!

Well, as of January 1, no more plastic bags in SA. So, what are we going to put all the loose vegetables in, I wonder! I can see checkout operators having to weigh each individual piece of fruit and veg! If it is anything like some of the schemes our SA pollies think up, it will be a nightmare with no thoughts of the consequences to everyday practice.

 

[keithj]

Good point Tubs. Can anyone explain why such a big push to get rid of plastic bags?

Ask the turtles - they mistake them for seaweed & eat them....and die slowly. Maybe dolphins too...

I think a lot of plastic bags end up in stormwater drains & get washed out to sea, that 0.1% is still millions of bags.

 

[steveadl]

Ask the turtles - they mistake them for seaweed & eat them....and die slowly. Maybe dolphins too...

I think a lot of plastic bags end up in stormwater drains & get washed out to sea, that 0.1% is still millions of bags.

OK that's fair enough. I knew it was something to do with waterways etc.

 

[GoAnna!]

What was the reference to food scraps and cockroaches? Why would you throw food in the bin unless you had no access to a garden? Our major guilt is nappies

When we forget to take our cloth bags we do get plastic bags from the supermarket but we then reuse them as bin liners, nappy bags etc.

I don't think any one of these changes will change the world but if we all makes many small changes it will have an impact.

 

[wylie]

We could all start by boycotting disposable nappies. I used cloth ONLY for our babies, until our youngest was six months old and we put the house on the market. Because I didn't want smelly nappies sitting around for inspections, I reluctantly bought some disposables.

I agree they are fantastic, saving on washing etc (and before anybody jumps in and says I caused just as much polution by using bleach on my cloth nappies.... I didn't use bleach and I use "green" detergent.)

After selling the house, and sticking with disposables until we had moved to save some work while packing and moving, my little chap was very unhappy with going back to cloth, so I kept using both. I used to HIDE the disposables under other things in the shopping trolley.

I cannot fathom how many billions of nappies are dumped every year. I know it is political suicide, but if the government really gave a rats, they could ban disposables AND cigarettes (and plenty of other things), but it all comes down to money and the fact that smokers and people with babies vote.

 

[Aaron Sice]

i have 2 kids and disposables DOUBLED our washing load. our WM was running 5 times a day, every day, for 1 year. our water bill was massive, our power bills were massive.

suddenly a few $40 boxes of nappies made life easier all around.

there are only 2 ways for humans to have a neutral impact on the environment.

1_ we kill off about 80% of our population and go back to living like homo-erectus.

2_ become dead. (actually, in death we become big fertiliser bags, so would actually be environmentally positive)

anything in between or outside these 2 options and we are a burden on our environment.

 

[Rolf Latham]

Hiya

My placky bags are already in good use.

The kids use em to do doggy poo patrol ................if we didnt have the bags, then we would simply have to buy others

ta
rolf

 

[BoatBoy]

Have a read up on the Pacific trash vortex

http://oceans.greenpeace.org/en/the-expedition/news/trashing-our-oceans/ocean_pollution_animation

http://www.crypticmoth.com/2006/11/plastic-vortex.html

http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Pacific-Garbage-Patch27oct02.htm

Not good


Dave

 

[Pushka]

Apparently though, the washing powders and bleaches we use for cloth nappies are as bad for the environment as disposables, except you dont see the effects as it goes down the drain.

One of my sons simply could not tolerate cloth nappies - he came out in the worst rash regardless of what I used to wash them in. Lucky he doesnt read this forum, eh!


Those links are interesting BoatBoy, but there are no plastic shopping bags mentioned in the rubbish list, but rather things that come from fishing boats and the like. So once again, are we simply chasing the easy targets and ignoring the real issues?

 

[wylie]

Apparently though, the washing powders and bleaches we use for cloth nappies are as bad for the environment as disposables, except you dont see the effects as it goes down the drain.

Only if you USE bleach and environmentally bad detergents. I try my best to be as low impact on the environment as I can, and didn't use bleach and I use detergents with no phosphorous, so my nappies weren't as white as in the adverts, but who sees them anyway

My mother-in-law used to constantly offer to take my nappies and boil them up for me to get them whiter than white - which I refused. Sun is the best bleach anyway.

 

[keithj]

1_ we kill off about 80% of our population and go back to living like homo-erectus.

...or send them to the moon/mars as Stephen Hawking suggested today.

Stephen Hawking called for a massive investment in establishing colonies on the Moon and Mars in a lecture in honour of NASA's 50th anniversary. He argued that the world should devote about 10 times as much as NASA's current budget – or 0.25% of the world's financial resources – to space.

The renowned University of Cambridge physicist has previously spoken in favour of colonising space as an insurance policy against the possibility of humanity being wiped out by catastrophes like nuclear war and climate change. He argues that humanity should eventually expand to other solar systems.

....

 

[natmarie73]

I'm definately pro-banning of plastic bags. So many people get a plastic bag even when they are buying one single item and that plastic bag is never used to put rubbish in and just ends up blowing around the environment and in our waterways. When I used to scuba dive, we would see lots of plastic shopping bags just floating in the water. Turtles and dolphins mistake them for jellyfish and choke/drown from them. And don't even get me started on the plastic soup in the pacific ocean...

Making people use special plastic bags that you buy for putting rubbish in will at least stop irresponsible people from just throwing shopping bags away and the plastic bag full of rubbish won't usuallly end up in our oceans.

Also, think about all the oil used to make plastic shopping bags - surely we should be saving our oil reserves so we can use it for more important things like fuel and other plastic items that are way more important than bags. I reckon when oil becomes very scarce there will be companies who go around finding old plastic bags etc to recycle.

P.S Wylie, you can't recycle plastic bags in your normal recycling but you can recycle them in the special bins provided at your local coles/woolies.

 

[Mr. Fabulous]

Please, NO MORE TALK ABOUT GETTING RID OF PLASTIC BAGS!

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i·ro·ny1

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5.an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.
Mark

 

[Strannik]

Why don't they just make the bags which decompose when they contact seawater? I wouldn't imagine it being so hard, and it would solve the problem.