More on the plastic stew issue
The Great Plastic Bag Plague
By Tara Lohan <
http://www.alternet .org/authors/ 8104/> , AlterNet
<
http://www.alternet .org/> . Posted September 5, 2007
<
http://www.alternet .org/ts/archives /?date[F]=09&date[ Y]=2007&dat\
e[d]=05&act= Go/> .
It turns out 'paper or plastic' is a life or death question for
our environment.
They're ubiquitous. They accompany us home each time we shop.
They swirl about our oceans, they cling to our trees, they drift
down our city sidewalks, they adorn metal fences, they're
consumed by animals.
They are an urban tumbleweed, a flag of the consumer era.
Each year across the world some 500 billion plastic bags are
used, and only a tiny fraction of them are recycled. Most of them
will have a short lifetime with a consumer -- they'll be used for
the few minutes it takes to get from the store to home and then
they're thrown away.
But what does "away" really mean? Plastic shopping bags can last
up to a thousand years in a landfill. In the environment, they
break down into tiny, toxic particles that become part of the
soil and water. Fortunately, some communities in America have
started taking serious action.
Stephanie Barger has seen what washes up on the shores of
Southern California. The executive director of Earth Resource
Foundation <
http://earthresourc e.org/> , Barger has helped clean
up the sands of Orange County and has helped educate people about
the effects of a society that embraces disposability.
For every bag, there's a cost. Environment California
<
http://www.environm entcalifornia. org/oceans/ reduce-ocean- polluti\
on> reports that plastic bags, and other plastic refuse that end
up in the ocean, kill up to one million sea creatures every year,
such as birds, whales, seals, sea turtles, and others. And the
number of marine mammals that die each year because of eating or
being entanglement in plastic is estimated at 100,000 in the
North Pacific Ocean alone.
The Algalita Marine Research Foundation
<
http://www.algalita .org/research. html> learned that "broken,
degraded plastic pieces outweigh surface zooplankton in the
central North Pacific by a factor of 6-1. That means six pounds
of plastic for every single pound of zooplankton. " Which means,
when birds and sea animals or looking for food -- more often,
they are finding plastic.
Our history with plastic bags is short but significant. The Film
and Bag Federation
<
http://www.plastics industry. org/about/ fbf/environment. htm#plasti\
cbaghistory> , an industry group, reports that plastic sandwich
bags were unveiled in 1957 and quickly became a part of our
routine, with department stores adopting plastic shopping bags in
the late '70s and supermarkets employing them by the early '80s.
Although bags are given out free these days, they are not without
their costs. Retailers in the United States spend $4 billion a
year on plastic bags, which gets passed on to customers as higher
prices.
A global problem
According to Vincent Coob, founder of reusablebags. com
<
http://www.reusable bags.com/ facts.php> , about 500 billion to 1
trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year and are
causing a global epidemic. The enormous demand for plastic bags
ties into the surging global demand for oil -- plastic bags are
made from ethylene, a petroleum byproduct. In the United States
alone, an estimated 12 million barrels of oil is used annually to
make plastic bags that Americans consume.
"Eliminating the use of disposable plastic bags is about more
than just the environment, " said Barger, "it is about health,
sustainability, economics and focusing on what kind of quality of
life we want."
A growing list of communities and countries are beginning to
rethink their dependence on plastic bags. Already a complete or
partial ban on the bags has been approved in Australia, South
Africa, parts of India, China, Italy, Bangladesh and Taiwan.
Africa has seen an increasing problem with bags as Environmental
News Network reports, "South Africa was once producing 7 billion
bags a year; Somaliland residents became so used to them they
renamed them "flowers of Hargeisa" after their capital; and Kenya
not so long ago churned out about 4,000 tons of polythene bags a
month."
In Asia, the bags were banned in 2002 in Bangladesh after they
were considered to be major factors in blocking sewers and drains
and contributing to the severe flooding that devastated the
country in 1988 and 1998.
Taking a different route, in 2002, Ireland imposed a 15-cent tax
on bags, which led to a rapid 90 percent reduction in use.
Ireland uses the tax to help fund other environmental
initiatives. Bags are also taxed in Sweden and Germany, and are
set to be banned outright in Paris this year.
In the United States, Californians Against Waste estimate that
Americans consume 84 billion plastic bags annually. The United
States has been slow out of the gate in addressing the growing
problem with plastic, but recently momentum has started for
positive change.
Currently 30 rural Alaskan villages and towns have banned plastic
bags. And in March the city of San Francisco became the first
major municipality to ban the use of plastic bags, and nearby
Oakland has followed suit, but not without controversy and
litigation from industry groups.
Californians themselves discard about 19 billion bags each year.
Over the years a growing coalition of environmental and consumer
groups have been pushing for the state to take action.
This summer their work resulted in the passage of Assembly Bill
2449, which requires all supermarkets, pharmacies and other large
retail stores to provide bins to help consumers recycle.
While this is a step in the right direction, many who have been
aggressive on the issue, see the law as a disappointment. "It is
basically just fluff -- most big stores already have the
recycling bins," said Barger.
Bryan Early, who works for the Sacramento-based Californians
Against Waste <
http://www.cawrecyc les.org/> , admitted the
legislation was a compromise. With pressure from the grocery and
plastics industries, the law includes a provision that takes away
the rights of municipalities to put a tax on bags the way Ireland
did.
Hence, San Francisco and Oakland's push to ban the bags entirely.
But the devil is in the details. The Oakland legislation (which
would go into effect in January) requires large markets to use
bags made of recyclable paper or "bioplastics" -- bags made from
compostable materials like cornstarch.
But a supermarket trade group calling itself the Coalition to
Support Plastic Bag Recycling has sued, saying that the ban in
Oakland and San Francisco conflict with the state law requiring
stores to have bag recycling programs.
The group argues that compostable bags and petroleum-based bags
would be confused by consumers and the compostable bags would
contaminate the plastics bags during the recycling process.
"We are wasting energy fighting about disposable bags," said
Barger, "when we should be putting energy into educating people
about reusable bags."
Alternatives vs. the solutions
While lawyers will hash out the details in Oakland, there is a
lot we can do as consumer and advocates -- some approaches are
better than others.
Compostable or bioplastic bags may seem like a good solution to
the typical plastic ones, but Barger believes they are more of an
alternative -- not a solution.
The bioplastics may be made from natural products, but they also
may contain a whole bunch of chemicals we don't know about, said
Barger. And since most of them will come from corn or soy,
they'll also mean more use of farmland laden with petroleum-based
pesticides and fertilizers and the same environmental and energy
costs to truck the bags to market.
And, while the bags may not last a thousand years, they do break
down slower than regular compost and could last up to six or
eight months in the environment -- threatening wildlife just the
same.
"Bioplastics is really just replacing one problem for another and
doesn't address what is wrong with our throw-away culture," said
Barger.
Neither paper nor plastic
Which brings us to the "paper or plastic" question. The best
answer is really neither. Paper bags have their own environmental
cost. According to Vincent Coob, 14 million trees were cut down
in 1999 to produce 10 billion grocery bags for Americans. The
production and shipping of the bags also contributes to global
warming and air pollution.
While some environmentalists dispute this, the Environmental
Protection Agency reported that paper bags generate 70 percent
more air pollutants and 50 times more water pollutants than
plastic bags, largely because of the amount of energy needed in
the recycling process.
The best alternative Barger and Early agree, are reusable bags
<
http://www.reusable bags.com/ store/> and education
<
http://earthresourc e.org/campaigns/ capp/capp- useful-links. html>
-- lots of it. By purchasing a reusable cloth bag, consumers can
save hundreds and perhaps thousands of plastic or paper bags.
If you can't afford one, then reusing a plastic bag for as long
as possible and then recycling it (if you are lucky to live in
California or the few other places that offer the service) is the
best bet.
It is also important, Barger says, to educate grocery store
managers and ask them to talk to their employees.
Political pressure helps, too. Ask your elected officials to
consider legislation to impose bag taxes or bag bans.
Probably the best thing we can do, though, is change our behavior
as consumers and begin valuing durability instead of
disposability. "There is a crisis happening right now," said
Barger. "We have got to stop the flow of plastic today. People
really want some organization to fix this problem. But we are the
only people that can fix it."
Tara Lohan is a managing editor at AlterNet.
Province targets plastic bags
RON BULL/TORONTO STAR
A shopper carries plastic grocery bags along with a reusable one at the Loblaws store at Lake Shore Blvd. and Leslie St.
Ontario to launch voluntary program with goal of cutting shopping bag usage in half May 09, 2007 04:30 AM
Kerry Gillespie Queen's Park Bureau The provincial government wants Ontarians to cut in half the number of plastic shopping bags they use over the next five years.
Today, Environment Minister Laurel Broten will announce a partnership with the Recycling Council of Ontario and grocer and retail associations to come up with a system of consumer incentives to meet the target, the Toronto Star has learned.
"Each of us can help clean up our environment by doing little things like reducing the number of plastic bags we use," a provincial source said.
The program will be voluntary but if the carrot approach doesn't work, the province has the ability to drag out the stick in the form of mandatory per bag charges or outright bans.
The recycling council will work with all retail businesses – from large grocery chains to small corner stores – to provide incentives such as store points that can be redeemed for products, air miles or cash to customers who use reusable cloth or canvas bags.
Other elements of the program, to be rolled out in coming months, will include training for store clerks to double bag less often, put more items in each bag and stop bagging large or single items. It may also include more per bag fees. "We're working with industry to give families the tools they need to cut their use of bags in half by 2012," the source said.
Right now, Ontarians use 7 million plastic bags each day – that's about 4 bags per person every week.
There will be annual reports measuring the success, and if the voluntary system isn't working, the province can regulate tougher measures such as bag fees or bans.
"While we're keen to be partnering with industry, we will take further action if we're not seeing the kind of results that we want to see," the source said.
Many grocery stores – seeking to capitalize on increased consumer interest in the environment – have already started to try to make a dent in those numbers by offering cloth or canvas bags or reusable bins and providing goodies to customers who use them.
A&P and Dominion, for example, sell a 99-cent reusable shopping bag that holds the equivalent of about three plastic bags of groceries, and give 5 air miles to customers with reusable bags. With all grocers and other stores on board, through their associations, competition will set in and incentives are likely to rise.
The incentive program flows from a pilot project in Sault Ste. Marie, which is trying to find out what it takes to get people to remember to bring their reusable bags back to the store.
"What are consumers looking for? What will make them remember to open the trunk and bring the reusable bin or the reusable bag. `Gee, if I'm going to get $5 off my groceries I'll do it,' or air miles or whatever the incentive is – what is enough to (encourage) them to take it back?" Jo-Anne St. Godard, executive director of the Recycling Council of Ontario, said of the pilot project.
The council is a non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating waste.
Ontario is in the midst of a waste-disposal crisis. Municipalities and businesses send some 4 million tonnes of garbage, much of it from the GTA, to Michigan each year.
But it's not a landfill shortage that drives people to want to reduce plastic bags, St. Godard said. "The biggest issue from a public standpoint is the problem plastic bags cause with litter. People see them in their communities, they see them on the way to work, they see them at the park," she said.
Ontarians have embraced recycling through their blue and grey curbside boxes and in many municipalities, green bin organics, too. Now it's a matter of having people think of using reusable bags as an extension of their recycling efforts, St. Godard said.
"It's one of those ways we can do something about the environment and it's not that big of a decision," she said.
Ontario is one of many jurisdictions around the world trying to curb the growing number of plastic bags, which are made from petroleum products and take hundreds of years to break down.
Ireland led the way in 2002 by charging about 22 cents per grocery bag and putting the millions raised into recycling programs.
In March, San Francisco became the first city in North America to ban plastic bags in grocery stores and large pharmacies. Retailers were given six months to a year to come up with alternatives such as cloth, paper or biodegradable bags.
In April, Leaf Rapids, a small town in northern Manitoba, became the first municipality in Canada to ban plastic shopping bags.
There is some debate about whether bans and high bag fees reduce the use of plastic overall or just drive people to buy more garbage bags, made of even thicker plastic, to use for kitchen waste or to pick up after their dog. While plastic bags are often used several times before they are discarded, in the end, few of them get recycled.
Overall, Ontario residents and businesses combined recycled only 25 per cent of their trash last year. That's far behind the 2003 Liberal election promise to divert 60 per cent of waste from landfills by 2008 through the three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) and composting.
The environment minister now says the province will be focusing on the first R – reduce.
"Like every single Ontarian, I want to see us reduce our environmental footprint, the legacy that we're leaving as a generation of heavy consumers, and we're going to tackle that issue," Broten said in a recent interview.
What can you do to reduce plastic bag use:
Download the plastic bag brochure (PDF File, 108kb) to find out how.
