Bag itThe argument against supermarket carrier bags is not as cut and dried as may appear from the news reports nor is banning them the saviour of the planet. Here are some of arguments to help balance the discussion. It is just a data stream not a structured argument, mostly because I haven’t come to any firm conclusion.
Between 8bn and 17.5bn single use plastic bags are used in the UK every year. Every source has a different figure.
It costs supermarkets around half a penny to produce 1 typical plastic bag.
millionbags4life.com
As that is a net cost of between £40m and £88m, there is clearly a powerful financial incentive to reduce them.
Most are discarded after one use [a newspaper, I forget which]—but what does discarded mean…
80% of UK consumers currently re-use their plastic bags at least once for a variety of purposes – such as bin liners, nappy sacks or lunch bags.
millionbags4life.com
80% of plastic carrier bags are re-used by UK households.
INCPEN (Industry Council for Packaging & the Environment)
These statements are not the same and I question which one is right. The British Retail Consortium quotes both in different places.
The INCPEN flyer is a PDF. Curiously I found it on an anti-plastic-bag site!
Plastic bags account for approximately:
- 1% of visible litter in the UK
- 2% of total litter on UK beaches
- 0.3% of the domestic waste stream
- 3.5–5.3% of total plastic packaging used in the UK
millionbags4life.com
so reducing them will not have a dramatic impact, though they are perhaps more visible than other forms of waste.
Plastic carrier bags make up a tiny proportion of litter or waste—less than 0.1% of litter and only 0.3% of the household waste that goes into landfill.
INCPEN
Elsewhere it says less than 0.06% of litter. Again this apparently contradicts the quote above. Most litter on the town streets is snack food packaging, bottles, cans, cigarette ends and newspaper. In country areas, fertiliser bags and fly-tipping are still a problem.
Energy recovered from incinerating a single plastic carrier bag will power a 60w light bulb for one hour.
INCPEN
0.06kWh. Is that believable? It also assumes that there are sufficient and efficient “energy from waste” facilities, but apparently 30m tonnes/year of plastic waste is used across Europe in this way.
All plastic packaging uses 3% (or 2% British Plastics Federation) of the world’s oil supply. I am not sure that is a positive or negative statistic, both sides cite it.
The Irish Carrier Bag Tax increased the sales of refuse bags, bin-liners and nappy bags. They also report that the alternative “bags for life” and paper bags are heavier and hence require more transport costs.
Whether this is a one off cost as people stock up or is ongoing is not known.
Plastic is by far the lightest of all carrier bag materials—so it takes much less fuel to transport, producing fewer emissions. A paper bag weighs roughly six times more than plastic, is about four times more expensive and takes up to ten times more storage space. British Retail Consortium
In Ireland, the plastic bag tax has encouraged theft from the shelves as shoppers bring their own bags into the store or take goods away without bags British retail Consortium
A financial incentive to keep them then, and do remember to pick up your receipt before leaving.
Supermarket carriers are very efficient—they will substitute for many other carriers at a lower net and gross cost—e.g. bin liners. Today’s plastic bags use 70 per cent less plastic than 20 years ago but are as strong and durable. A plastic bag weighs about seven grams, yet can carry up to 20kgs—more than 2,500 times its own weight. British Retail Consortium
The landfill argument is complex—on the one hand there is the quoted problem that plastic bags take 100 years (1000 years BBC quoting M&S) to degrade but there is also a move to stop putting in bio-degradable stuff such as vegetable waste and paper packaging because it DOES degrade and generates methane.
To maximise the benefit of the new bioplastics we’ll have to modify the way we throw away our garbage—to simply substitute new plastics for old won’t be saving space in our landfills. www.science.org.au
Landfill space is mostly taken up with building industry waste not plastic bags.
All Tesco free carrier bags are now degradable. These break down in just 18 months without leaving anything that could harm the environment.
Tesco
They need to check the language that they use carefully.
Biodegradable means something that is made from organic material that completely breaks down into organic matter leaving nothing behind. Degradable carrier bags are something different; they are made from fossil fuel derivatives, but contain chemical additives to help them decompose more quickly. These degradable carrier bags do not break down completely and tend to leave a powdery residue, which usually requires light, heat and oxygen to decompose.
Sainsburys
Apparently one of the additives uses cobalt. There was a brief period when PVC bags were used (the ones that rustle loudly) but I think these are not environmentally friendly even though they degrade in UV light (like your gutters and windows).
Reuse is a better objective than recycle.
Single use carrier bags are one of the most potent symbols of our throw away society. Encouraging customers to make a small change in their shopping habits here may lead them to extend their thinking to other areas, making it easier to find solutions to the wider packaging and food waste issues that WRAP is working on with Tesco and other leading grocery retailers.
Tesco & wrap.org.uk
this is a powerful argument—it is not the act that is important, but the principle and the precedent.
Webmaster
Isn’t the bigger problem the gas you use to get to the store? If the average household actually planned out their meals on a weekly basis and only went to the store once a week the gas savings would destroy the savings of the bags.
I also read an article that truckers are starting to slow down on the freeways because the savings is gas is greater than the time saved. A report stated that driving 65mph instead of 70mph increases gas efficiency by 8.2%. If everyone would take their time we could have an incredibly positive impact on the environment (including using bicycles & such more often).
since the debate at hand is on making more environment friendly packaging materials which have more bio-degradable components so as to make them disappear of this planet saving the space in landfills as well as the per head cost alternates are being generated towards this approach. Awareness in people is the biggest point to consider. The need is just to carry stuff around. There are many alternates e.g. quoting the 2007’s top ranked packaging industry i.e. abc packaging ( http://www.abc-packaging.com ) have been devoting resources towards generating environmental friendly natured packaging solutions.
They are generating positive trends in the market sector. Industries around them now realize the importance of this critical point. A paper (bio-degradable as it is just cellulose composites) is much preferable over plastic alternates .
‘Energy recovered from incinerating a single plastic carrier bag will power a 60w light bulb for one hour.’
INCPEN
No doubt energy can be extracted by burning things up as in using them as fuel but one must consider the fact that burning just wont give you energy alongside that you will receive payloads of dangerous gases which are both dangerous to the humans as well as this beautiful planet.