Thread: Anti-Plastic Bag Lobby

We too have a collection of the re useable green bags but keep forgetting to put them back in the cars (oh dear, greenies will bite at that one) when we bring the shopping home.
I find that we accumulate too many shopping bags even after filling them full of rubbish for the recycle bin.
Thats another point, we have two bins, one normal waste and a recycle, a flyer from the council telling us what we can and cannot put in then lo and behold, 5.30am MOnday, the one garbage trucks puts the two in the same hole. It is not a divided compartment in the back and the council inform me that I can be fined if I put the wrong thing in the wrong bin.

Our council has yet to implement the separate bin idea, they do have a different crew driving around in the old fashioned truck with fit lads hanging off the back who collect the recycling. We are asked to sort all of the recycling items, cardboard, paper, cans and glass etc. which we put into separate cardboard boxes and then they come along and chuck the whole lot in together :confused: Why bother sorting?

We use those green bags now. Although they're made from plastic too, they can be reused many times over. Say you fill 6 bags a week at the supermarket. If these green bags last for a year, that's 306 less bags a year per household going into the pit. For our area, that about a million bags a year.

I'm not a greenie by any means but I do wonder what we're going to do with our rubbish when the local tip fills up. I reckon it's going to become very expensive to dispose of it down the track. 15 years ago, the local tip was an open trench. Everything went into it and once a week they'd set fire to it, then run the dozer through and push it out the other end. You can only do that for so many years.

How much plastic bags contribute to the problem compared to disposable nappies, those plastic trays you get your meat and veggies on etc, I couldn't say. I suppose it's something that can be done to reduce it and it's a nice visible and simple thing governments can get involved in to say "hey, look, we care about the environment". I reckon there's plenty of other things that could be cracked down on but plastic bags are an easy target.

I was in an Aldi stupid-market with SWMBO some time ago :eek: . They have a good idea. they charge you for a plastic shopping bag. 50c I think it was for a large strong bag. The idea being that you keep the bag and bring it back each time you shop. Works to, we,ve had two of these in the car and occassionally remember to take them to the shop with us. Gets a few funny looks in Coles and Woolies though! But nobody has refused to fill them for us yet.
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Don't start me on bloody Greenies. The enviromental problems of the world would be halved if they just disappeared!! :mad:

No nobody has mentioned that our favourite store that we love to hate (the "B") charges 10c for a bag (it goes to charity). They have seen a significant reduction in the number of bags becasue when pushed most people can find a way of making do. They either re-use cardboard boxes that would have been thrown away anyway or just carry the stuff in their hands.

I'ts amazing that even 10c can make such an impact.

Also, let's not think of recycling as the be all and end all - this is really only one step up from rubbish. I've seen the following as the priority for dealing with packaging.

1. Refuse - as in don't accept the packaging in the first place
2. Reduce - buy items that use less packaging - or don't put something that is already in plastic into another plastic bag
3. Reuse - if we used plastic shopping bags 300 times, we wouldn't have a problem with plastic
4. Recycle - where possible, but don't forget there are significant costs in recycling (transport, processing, etc).
5. Refuse - throw it away. However, have a look at what proportion of the stuff you throw away is real waste and what proportion is just the packaging it came in.

Then think about why we should be doing this? It's not just to save the environment but it also saves us money - half the time we throw things away because we can't be bothered to do the right thing. If we were charged for that, then we would soon do something about it.

Simon

Originally Posted by simon c

3. Reuse - if we used plastic shopping bags 300 times, we wouldn't have a problem with plastic

Simon

Simon

I have had plastic bags that don't even make it out of the supermarket before they burst let alone reuse them 300 times.

Originally Posted by Barry_White

Simon

I have had plastic bags that don't even make it out of the supermarket before they burst let alone reuse them 300 times.

Sorry Barry, my statement was confusing. I hadn't mean't to refer to the standard bags from the supermarket but I was making the point that one of the reusable bags is significantly better than lots of disposable bags, irrespective of whether it is plastic or not.

Simon

lived in Munich in the mid-nineties. Two adults and school-age child generated 1/2 a bucket of "rubbish" a fortnight. Everything else was recylable.

Every supermarket had somewhere to dump cardboard and household batteries.

No free bags at the supermarket and no plastic bags for sale either. If you wanted a bag and you'd forgotten yours you could take a cardboard box or pay for a cloth bag.

Every supermarket had a machine( or a person) which took glass jars and bottles and gave you a credit slip for the deposits which got knocked off your bill at the till. No plastic bottles in the shops. No aluminium cans in the shops. No plastic yoghurt cartons ( which most councils here DON'T accept for recycling ). All drinks and yoghurts came in recyclable glass jars.

I've watched people take the inner bag out of a cornflakes packet and leave the cardboard at the supermarket rather than dispose of it at home.

Nowhere was more than a few minutes walk from a recycling centre - big metal tubs in the streets for glass, metal, paper, plastic.

You had three household wheelie bins - one for "rubbish" rubbish, one for paper and one for compostable material.

Public bins in the street had three compartments - one for "rubbish" rubbish, one for paper and one for bottles.

At work there were recycling containers in the stairwells for fluorescent marker pens and our office bins had seperate sections for recyclables and "rubbish" rubbish.

Every few months the "gift wagen" poison truck came round and you could hand in your light bulbs, batteries, old paint etc.

Its only a matter of time guys. You'll get used to it VERY quickly and it will seem really odd when you go somewhere where there are no recycling facilities.

It is going to cost the supermarkets money though because once we all use our own bags they are going to have to change their checkout design for the uk style with space after the checkout for people to pack their own bags.

It is going to cost the supermarkets money

It is going to cost us money because anything that increases their operating costs is going be reflected in the prices.

They've been threatening to give us the 3-bin system here for a couple of years. The trouble is that the council can't afford the bins, the new trucks etc... and they seem a bit nervous about passing the cost on to the rate payer, since we're already one of the highest rated areas in NSW ($2000 plus per year). It's all very well but who is going to pay for it? It's a lot cheaper to chuck it in a hole and let their grandkids worry about it...

Originally Posted by vsquizz

"I like the string bags man, but my Lentils keep filling through the gaps, freaks me out man"

NFTY Ones

Sound like youve been watching too much of the Young Ones, man.
Ohh Neill its all your fault!!!

Al

Originally Posted by ozwinner

Sound like youve been watching too much of the Young Ones, man.
Ohh Neill its all your fault!!!

Al

When you say Neill, it's all your fault - you're talking about a hippy who's spaced out on solvents rather than our illustrious host who has better things to do with his solvents?

Your call???


Al

I'm not saying a thing

If I can ask the stupid question because the topic, of this thread, has been flogged to death in our household already (Dad's a big environmental Hooligan)

So, I've travelled extensively in SE Asia and the plastic bag problem is massive. So how are other countries dealing with it??.

I reckon we should have 4 or 5 plastic containers which fit into racks in shopping trolleys. Take your boxes in, fillem up and back out to the car wAlHa. No placky bags. That is excepting the five pounds of excessive useless consumer grabbing packaging that every thing seems to be enveloped in these days.


Cheers