And The Plastic Bags Shall Inherit The Earth

An article in National Geographic several months ago discussed this same issue. Plastic bags are so useful and cheap to produce that they have captured 80 percent of the grocery and convenience store market since they were introduced 25 years ago. “The numbers are absolutely staggering,” said Vincent Cobb, an entrepreneur in Chicago, Illinois, who recently launched the Web site reusablebags.com to educate the public about what he terms the “true costs” associated with the spread of “free” bags. According to Cobb’s calculations, between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year. Around one to three percent of those bags (i.e. millions) end up in the litter stream outside of landfills.

It’s hard to say what the life expectancy of plastic bags are. According to some studies, it takes months to hundreds of years for plastic bags to breakdown. But a study carried out for the Irish supermarket chain Musgraves concluded that they last for a million years (I make no claim as to the accuracy of that study though). And as they decompose, tiny toxic bits seep into soils, lakes, rivers and the oceans.

As big a problem as plastic bags (and other plastic products) are, the solution may be surprisingly simple. Taxes. Using cost accounting principles, it is easy to see that what we pay for products is often not what they really cost. Plastic packaging is cheap because it dumps the cost of disposal on municipalities. So if we determine what the true costs of plastic are, and dump those costs on the manufacturers in the form of taxes, as the Green Party of Ontario, Canada recommended (they didn’t win a single seat in the last provincial election, by the way), it stands to reason that manufacturers won’t be so keen to continue using plastic where other materials would do. And taxing plastic has already been shown to work, even if it’s the consumers that are taxed. Tony Lowes, director of Friends of the Irish Environment in County Cork, said the 15 cent (about 20 cents U.S.) tax on plastic bags introduced there in March 2002 has resulted in a 95 percent reduction in their use. “It’s been an extraordinary success,” he said. According to Lowes, just about everyone in Ireland carries around a reusable bag and the plastic bags that once blighted the verdant Irish countryside are now merely an occasional eyesore.

7 thoughts on “And The Plastic Bags Shall Inherit The Earth”

  1. Like aluminum cans. Then even if someone litters a plastic bag, it’ll be worth someone else’s while to pick it up and redeem the deposit.

  2. it’s obvious. spend as much money as it takes (!) to research “plastic” and find a quickly biodegradable and equivalent replacement. THEN outlow the old stuff, endorse the new, and watch as people complain.

  3. Plastic bags may last for millions of years? OK, so plastic is a flexible rock.

    Instead of taking the oil out of the ground and making plastic bags out of it, you’d prefer it be left in the ground? What do you expect to happen to the surface and streams where the oil leaks to the surface? Is an asphalt covering better than plastic?

    Or we could toss it in a thermal depolymerization unit and recycle it along with the rest of the trash. Or the brush fires can burn it off and break it down to carbon powder.

  4. It’s not a choice between one or the other–it’s a choice between natural pollution versus natural AND artificial polution. By producing trillions of plastic bags, we are not reducing the amount of natural surface oil leakage, because the oil from which those bags are created does not come from natural oil seeps but rather from major oil wells just like all the rest of the oil we use for daily consumption.

    So producing plastic bags simply adds to the environmental mess. To quote from the International Plastics Task Force site:

    While plastics are yet to be considered a significant disposal problem in much of the first world (largely because these materials are landfilled–out of sight, out of mind), organizations in the global south have demonstrated considerable concern in regards to the detrimental effects of plastic products, notably the terminal waste generated by their disposal. Direct disposal (littering or dumping)and incineration (burning) of these wastes is a common practice in the global south. Each is harmful to the health of people and the environment. For example, dumping in rivers, streams and even urban drainage systems pollutes water courses and causes flooding. When these waters are unsanitary, they carry disease into the household. The burning of plastics encourages airborne pollution, the majority of which is extremely toxic and can cause a host of health problems (cancer, asthma, etc.). Although landfilling and recycling programs “vanish” the waste problem, each has considerably negative consequences: landfills leak and often contaminate the ground water with toxic liquids and residues. The recycling of plastic is often accomplished by exporting waste materials to Asian countries where recycling facilities are often likened to “sweatshops” where by laborers prepaid little for dangerous work. The increased push for unfettered trade and neo-liberal policy has scudded in intensifying these problems.

    It seems to me that the best solution is to simply not create so many plastic bags in the first place.

  6. We beg to disagree that plastic is not degradable. Whilst we appreciate the concern world over about the environmental hazards due to the use of plastic bags, we take this opportunity to bring to your knowledge that we have successfully developed a technology that can make plastic bags Biodegrade in soil and compost, leaving no harmful elements without hampering or causing any further damage in the soil. Our bags have been successfully tested for various biodegradable parameters. Whilst everyone is concerned and shouting about plastic bags and the future of our environment, no government has come forward with legislation encouraging the use of Biodegradable Plastic Bags.

    Should you seek further information please visit our website on http://www.bioplast.org.uk

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