Plastic bags get a bad wrap

In May of this year, Los Angeles became the largest US city to ban plastic bags in supermarkets. The bags are being phased out at 7,500 shops over the next year in what environmentalists have claimed as a major victory. Caring for the planet? It is an odd society that bans bags before guns. Some basic facts are in order:

Less than 1% of all plastic bags become litter, because we can recycle them. Australian government research has shown that only 2% of annual expenditure on cleaning up litter was attributable to plastic bags. In Ireland just 0.3% of waste was found to be plastic bags.

In landfill the biggest problem is not plastic but paper, mainly newspaper, then wood, mainly from demolition, then concrete. Landfill operators welcome plastic bags because they can be burned, or bundled and retrieved.

Plastic is recyclable. It can be melted easily and at low heat and cost, and passed through an extruder to be made into plastic fence posts.

Floating bags don’t kill marine mammals. The main culprits in the ocean are fishing gear, ropes, lines and strapping bands – all, by the way, made of other plastic. Most whales, dolphins, porpoises and seals are too big to get caught up in a shopping bag.

Plastic bags are biodegradable. Polyethylene melts at 280deg but glass has to be heated to 700deg to recycle it. In the sea; the sun, waves and wind eventually break plastic down. Glass takes as much energy to recycle as to make. Plastic uses 100x less energy to recycle as to make.

A plastic bag is universally considered a courtesy in retail - so cheap to make that vendors give them away at street markets with items costing less than 10c.

How cheap? Each bag costs supermarket owners a fortieth of a cent. Charging 10c per bag nets the store a 40000% markup. Which stores? In NZ, all Pac ‘n Save and The Warehouse stores now charge for plastic bags. There is no reason why customers should not be given the option of paying for a bag on a voluntary basis, except of course that they simply wouldn’t, giving the lie to the often-touted Greens’ claim that the public are all environmentally concerned.

A pinhead of oil is all it takes to manufacture one bag, and one teaspoonful of oil makes 1300 bags; enough to shop every day for 3.5 years. One 600ml Coke bottle weighs the equivalent of 30-50 plastic bags but no one seems to be calling for soft-drink containers to be banned.

One cup of oil makes one disposable nappy or 150,000 plastic bags. You'd have to shop for 400 years before your discarded bags equalled one nappy on the landfill.

Greenhouse gases emitted when making a paper bag are 5 times greater than those producing a plastic bag. Paper bags are 7 times as bulky, requiring 7 times more transport fuel and 7 times more trucks to deliver them, putting out 7 times more emissions.

Paper bags use up trees and fall apart after one use. The industry is filthy because paper rots quickly and encourages rats.

It is no accident plastic bags evolved. They are hygienic, handy and hardy. Plastic wrap is healthy because it retains juices and prevents meat contamination. Who will front increased medical bills from salmonella if plastic sealing is banned?

Every supermarket item from meat and cheese through to each cucumber is today covered by protective plastic. Nearly all liquids are sealed in plastic cartons. We even pay for these using plastic notes and credit cards. It is hard to see how the non-use of the one final bag at the checkout is going to dent the universal use of this amazingly useful material.

There has been the same call to ban plastic bags in NZ but the hysteria isn't logical. If disposal is the issue then let’s improve and increase rubbish collections. Give people financial incentives to recycle. But many NZ suburbs are still only allowed one small bin or one rubbish bag.

Bring back refund systems for bottles and bags. You never saw discarded bottles in gutters when they fetched 4 pence for the small bottles and 8 pence for large. Introduce vending machines for refills of shampoo and drink. Manufacturers could reduce secondary packaging around packaging.

Paper bags are not an option in a wet location such as Auckland. By the time you reached your car in the supermarket car-park your rain-soaked bag will have disintegrated, spilling its contents. We wouldn’t be short of jobs if we brought down the cost of fuel to bring about more productivity. It is over-regulation and eco-permit requirements that stifle economic growth.

Plastic is the true miracle of our time. Without it there would be no medical advances, no space exploration and no air travel. Progress would be dead in the water. There could be no home appliances, iPods or laptops. Supermarkets would cease to exist because almost everything arrives in plastic packing and can be hygienically stored.

The green radicals are strangely quiet on important issues like poverty and sanitation. No child died because a bag was available but plenty do when the cost of food and living rises. Caring for the environment is the current catch-phrase. It has replaced caring for people.

If you're worried about CO2, plastic bags don't break down, so bags are carbon sinks. In fact no carbon sink could possibly be better than a plastic bag because the carbon is locked up for years to come until the bag is destroyed.

Environmentalists might inform us what it is they really want. If creating carbon sinks indicates caring for the planet then we should use heaps more plastic. Banning plastic bags means we would need more paper, leading to more pollution, and yet their call is that pollution changes the climate. Methinks we could do without the Greens and their confusing logic..but not the plastic.