Banning plastic bags bad for the environment?
This makes me think that could be the case.
How often do you stop in the supermarket when you haven’t planned to? I know I do fairly often, especially on my way home from work. In that case I don’t have my reusable bags with me (I don’t use those horrible supermarket ones either, although I do have a nice Tesco one with a sheep on it, but that’s because its cute) and if there’s too much to fit in the small bag I take to work then I use the plastic bags.
Now imagine plastic bags are banned.
What am I to do? I will have to buy a bag (or two, or three) if I want to go shopping on the spur of the moment. Of course, supermarkets will love this, more money for them. These bags however surely use more resources to make? The impact on the environment to make one of these bags will be higher, the reduction in impact will come from the reuse.
So, not only would banning plastic bags result in greater expense to consumers (and be a government backed handout to supermarkets) it would also increase the environmental damage caused by those of us who reuse bags most of the time and the impact of anyone who doesn’t care about paying the extra charge each time they go shopping.
Add in the fact that plastic bags make great bin liners which would otherwise have to be made and then bought, banning plastic bags could increase environmental impact (as well as the impact on our pockets).
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February 26th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
I very much agree with you on the reusing bin bags as bin liners. If I didn’t get them free I’d have to go out and buy them from a shop - so no saving for the environment at all.
I do use plastic bags, but it’s usually for the same reason as you - an unexpected trip to a supermarket or the bag I have with me is not big enough.
I don’t think charging for bags helps the environment in that respect. It has just become a way of making it look as though you are doing something for the environment.
February 26th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
You poor thing, why not learn to keep a couple of proper bags in your car - is that too much to ask???
People used to do shopping without free plastic bags and ought to learn to do it again.
As soemone who almost always takes my own reusable bags it would be great to have some company so one doesn’t feel like a freak and so one isn’t consnatly having to say - NO I don’t need another bag, I’ve got one.
Since when were bin liners essential ? As the ‘life’ of most plastic bags is about 15 minutes in the car on the way home, a day a bin liner is hardly great reuse.
February 26th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
In the unlikely event that shops are stuffed full of people “who just popped in”, why can’t their needs be met by using bags that are recyclable e.g. paper? (Indeed, why not bags made from recycled materials.)
I have always wondered why “bag for life” costs you but the flimsy carriers are given away. Should be the other way round, surely?
February 26th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Its nice to see Tom and Stephen planning ahead for the middle class car user.
I use public transport, so I can’t leave bags in my car. Indeed, even for a planned trip having to take bags with me is a substantial inconvinence. But I should miss out for the warm feelings reusable bags give much more polluting car users!
By the same token, paper bags are rather useless if its raining and I am, once again, not in a car.
But the negligible loss of CO2 emmissions is clearly worth inconviencing me, while the many just as validly criticised “excesses” of the self-righteous middle aged middle class are left well enough alone.
A system to lower CO2 that relies on targetting specific set of CO2 sources declared “bad” by beaurocrats will always work work poorly and directed in the social and economic intrests of those beaurocrats. Only systems such as a tax on CO2 emmissions caused by any product will be even handed and effective.
February 26th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Plastic bags are made from a by-product of the oil refining process. If it’s not used for bags, they may well have to flare it off.
Environmentalists trashing the environment again.
February 26th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
What short-sighted complaints…
Plastic bags never go away, they break down into small pieces that fish and animals eat and if they don’t die as a result, then we harvest them and re-ingest the plastic ourselves.
Paper bags cost us trees, are more expensive to produce (and thus your groceries are more expensive), and are heavier to ship (thus creating more emissions).
Eventually (ya know, after maybe a month without any plastic bags), you will adapt and have reusable bags in your cars, homes, closets and even on the bus. You will find a new way to do things and you will move on with your life, forgetting that plastic bags were ever such a necessity.
February 26th, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Why should plastic bags be banned, as opposed to many other types of plastic packaging, or CO2 use unrelated to small amounts of plastic being produced at all?
There is no evidence that plastic bags are an especially pressing problem that needs to be dealt with via a specific legislative ban.
Lets ban sticky notes, they are wasteful. Lets ban glitter, disposable pens, polystyrene cups and so much more besides.
Such thinking it not the result of a liberal approach.
Either come up with reasoning by disposable bags are very, very much worse than other disposable goods or support a systemic solution that will fairly deal with them all. It is you who is being shortsighted by proposing pennypacket solutions to societal issues. You cannot see the forest for the tree you are hugging, as it were.
Simply riding the latest hobbyhorse of the left simply won’t do.
February 27th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Basically what Tinter said.
I don’t drive, so I can’t have a couple of reusable bags in my car.
As for bin liners - I like to have bin liners because I don’t want to have to wash out my bins every time I empty them because they’ve got dirty.
I’d rather have a bit of plastic in a landfill than more detergent in the water system too.
February 27th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Tinter says:
“even for a planned trip having to take bags with me is a substantial inconvinence.”
Really - substantial is it?????? How exactly?
Then we have the strange implication that only middle aged middle class people uses cars to do their shopping.
wrong again!!!
And yes, lets tax or regulate “disposable” pens, polystryene cups and more besides.
Because by and large they are not disposable, but represnt a sort of corporate flytipping on a vast scale.
Oh, and perhaps you ought to look at todays (27th Feb 2008)
Daily Mail - a newspaper not known for supporting leftwing hobby horses - it has just launched a banish plastic bags campaign.
February 27th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
There’s a lot of fuss over whether this or that bag is recycl-able or reus-able. Yet (pretty much) all bags are recyclable, reusable and throw-away-able.
Why does a thicker bag cost more than a thinner one? Because it uses more resources. How many times will it on average get used, compared to a thinner one? Anybody’s guess.
Reusable bags might get reused, and so might disposable ones. For them to pay their way, a bag with 50 times as much plastic would have to get reused 50 times more than a disposable bag. Will it? Perhaps, nobody knows.
And still the impacts of bags is trivial compared to the rest of the packaging of the goods put in them. And the rest of the packaging is often trivial compared to the goods themselves. Why on earth is there all this focus on the least significant aspect of the process?
February 27th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Tom:
The Daily Mail is populist and will jump on any populist bandwagon.
Its also the kind of authoritarian measure the Mail likes. Ban this because ‘we know best’.
Joe is absolutely correct, bags have a trivial impact.
Personally I think the costs associated with banning them are probably higher than the gains.
A liberal measure would be to tax the manufacture of the bags according to the externalities they create. This would likely still lead to them being free at supermarkets because per bag it is tiny.
If they cost money, then let people decide whether the financial cost is greater than, or less than the other costs involved - that would be liberal and maximise freedom whilst dealing with the problem.
Perhaps its a bit too subtle for the bansturbators though.
I notice you decide banning plastic bags is left wing - I suppose it is since it affects the poorest most and diminishes freedom. It seems that’s what left wing means today…
February 27th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I appreciate the four question marks. Truly, I now feel my claim is ridiculous.
Reusable bags are fairly substantial in size, so that they are, you know, durable. I am not going to be carrying them with me unless I am specifically going shopping; so I won’t be able to do so without forward planning. Plus I don’t like carrying bags around. Of course, the fact that I must justify why I find it inconvinient shows exactly the kind of authoritarian perspective this is coming from. Only approved inconviniences count, people can’t decide for themselves.
Of course not only middle class people go shopping in cars. But of those of us who don’t, it is weighted towards those in lower income groups. Thus it works in the intrest of the middle classes overall.
I agree with tristans above statements re:tax, although of course this kind of tax should be applied across the board. Then we would see what causes a real impact (cheap flights, possibly overpackaging, and actual major issues) being tackled, not the latest scapegoat.
February 27th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Tinter:
Yes, I should have said the tax should be across the board. Isn’t that broadly LibDem policy anyway?
Generally:
I’ve never quite got what is so bad about plastic bags anyway. Its just assumed they’re bad for the environment. Is this because they’re not recycled or reused much? Is it because its seen as wrong to throw things away? Or is it actually CO2 emissions (if so why is it not stated?*)
* or have I missed it being stated?
February 27th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Party policy supports having supermarkets charge for plastic bags.
On green taxes, it largely applies to industry and especially fuels at the moment, though I think theres a view to taking it further in the future. I think we favour the current cap & trade systems though, which I do not view as going far enough, although I suppose they would be less regressive if taken to their ultimate conclusion.
February 28th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I’m probably being dense here but it would seem that buying hydrocarbons and making non-biodegradable solid objects from them that get landfilled would seem to be a kind of mitigation of global warming. After all plastics is competing with fuels for at least some fractions of crude oil.
Remember the dominant environmental ideology grew out of the club of Rome, which was primarily concerned about resources running out. From that angle recycling makes sense. But in a global warming world perhaps we should want oil to be used up quickly by processes that sequester the carbon.
March 1st, 2008 at 5:24 am
The question was “banning plastic bags bad for the environment?”
so far we’ve had Tinter with his ‘even for a planned trip I won’t be able to take a bag without forward planning’
yes his/her claim is truly ridiculous
We had some nonsense that banning anything is illiberal -
which doesn’t of itself address the question.
Liberatrianism is not liberalism. Liberatianism, is illiberal.
There is the proposition that reusing bags is more environmenatlly damaging - which is not true.
and then there is the argument - that banning plastic bags will lead to greater use of plastic because people will buy more bin liners - which has some merit to it, but no evidence is put forward to support this. Rather, it is obvious that most of the 9 billion plastic bags used in the UK do not end up reused as bin liners.
March 1st, 2008 at 10:01 am
Tom, I agree the evidence is sketchy on the bin-liner argument. But if something is to be banned, shouldn’t the burden of proof (or the burden of pretty good evidence, at least) lie with the proponents of the ban.
Don’t you think it will be enormously damaging to the environment if people find out down the line that many of the sacrifices they made did more harm than good? Wouldn’t that seriously undermine our willingness to do more?
And yes I may well be wrong with the carbon sequestration point, but again, somebody should have researched it before we even contemplate a ban. Where is that research?
March 2nd, 2008 at 2:59 am
Well obviously for a planned trip I would have a bag. Thats why it has the word planned in there. That was really a tangental issue that I spent more time on than its worth though.
I think Tristans latest post rather puts down the idea that we know which is more environmentally damaging at the least.
Regardless, even if I allow that it would be better for the environment, that doesn’t mean its the right thing to do. Theres no evidence this is the most pressing issue, or even an especially urgent one.
Environmental policy shouldn’t be decided by media bandwagoning. We must have a joined up policy that keeps the difficulties for the public low enough to be acceptable while lowering emmisions. This means a firm carbon tax policy, that targets the real culprits like transport and industry- not bans that fiddle at the edges while putting all the onus for change onto ordinary people.