Plastic Bags(1)

Last weekend, when shopping in Coles with my roommates, we realized the notice signed on counters. “Do you really need plastic bags?”

In accordance with citizen’s behavior, their answers might “yes”. Most customers seem to prefer plastic bags provided by supermarkets, due to the convenience. However, the negative influence on environment caused by white pollution could be significant. A report published in 2002 demonstrated that an amount of 6.9 billion plastic bags are used annually, which mean one citizen may use at least one plastic bag every day on average. 53% of the bags are from supermarkets, while other are from retails, restaurants and shopping malls. If these bags are buried underground, it may take more than 1000 years to break them down into landfill. Moreover, the negative impacts resulted from plastic bags could be discovered on many other aspects.

1.     It might be dangerous to animal life, especially those marine ones, when they are mistaken for food. If the whole bag is swallowed, animals may lose the ability of digesting real food and die a slow death from starvation or infection.

2.     Plastic bags are a highly visible, ugly component of litter. It is said the state government in Australia spend over $200 million annually on picking up plastic litters.

3.     A lightweight plastic bag may consume about 4.5 times more energy in its manufacture than reusable ‘green bags’. To imagine, if ten lightweight plastic bags are used per week over a 2-year period, the greenhouse gas impact will have more than three times the greenhouse gas impact of a reusable ‘green bag’.

Actually, in Australia, the management of plastic bags has been discussed since 2007, but is with little achievement. In March 2007, Peter Garratt, the minister of the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and Arts, once announced that a phased plan would be conducted at the end 2008 to cease the use of plastic bags in Australia. Although the minister showed his great ambitions and promised to talk with government in 6 states, as well as 2 regions, the outcomes are not that satisfactory.

So far, only some small states have made legislations and brought them into practice. The use of grey plastic bags has already been ceased in South Australia, Tasmania, Canberra and the northern part, but New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland seem still to be hesitating.

In the next blog, I will discuss the methods different countries use to manage plastic bags.

Reference: http://www.ntepa.nt.gov.au/waste-pollution/plastic-bag-ban/enviroimpacts