Plastic Bags
As the Daily Mail launches it’s “Banish the Bags” campaign, I can’t help but feel they are going about it the wrong way.
The environmental problems caused by the plastic pest have been known for some time – long before Peter Jones or Theo Paphitis mentioned their hate of them on Dragon’s Den.
I am all in favour of reducing the number of plastic bags in the wild, but I think supermarkets etc should be promoting other bags more effectively. They should replace all their conventional bags with ones that are:
- permanent (designed for long-term use), such as the cotton ones already being promoted OR
- biodegradable – e.g. paper or biodegradable polythene film (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4758419.stm)
The fact is, bags are extremely useful and can be re-used in and around the home many times. If all ‘plastic’ bags in the home (bin liners, freezer bags etc) were biodegradable, there would be no need to punish people with a ‘bag tax’. It would be better for the environment and people could still carry their shopping with relative ease.
Simply banning all plastic bags is not the best solution, nor is charging people for conventional bags…
February 28th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Chris Huhne:
The amount of CO2 released by a decomposing plastic bag is not that high. Rotting vegetable matter or decaying refuse is going to produce CO2, methane and other gases anyway. If the source of the starch used to make the biodegradable plastic is fast growing vegetation then the carbon can be offset and the actual overall CO2 footprint would be negligible.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodegradable_polythene_film
People should be focused on the reduction of CO2 gases from larger sources and reducing the amount of energy wasted…