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What You Need To Know About Plastic Bags

Despite our reduction in plastic bag use, Australians still use over 4 billion plastic check-out bags a year. All of them are made from non-renewable fossil fuels.
Plastic check-out bags are not free. A 2002 Sunday Telegraph article said that industry figures showed that $100 million a year was being added to grocery bills to pay for the plastic bags that we get at the check-out.
We only use plastic bags for minutes, but many of them can take hundreds of years to break down. This has a very significant impact on wildlife and the environment. During that time, they can be mistaken for food by animals. They also trap birds, block drains and kill livestock.
Such plastic bags can have a devastating impact on marine life. Back in 2000, a Bryde’s whale died an agonising death after becoming stranded on a Cairns beach. The post-mortem found the whale’s stomach was tightly packed with six square metres of plastic. Far too much of it was plastic check-out bags.
If the whale had died at sea, the plastic bags would have been released back into the marine environment, where they could have carried on their destructive path for many years to come.
Over the past five years, the Tasmanian town of Coles Bay has been plastic bag free at the check-out. As a result, they have stopped the usage of 1.75 million plastic bags. Instead of plastic, they now use reusable bags and Australian-made paper bags. Other towns have since followed their example and have banned plastic check-out bags.
Back in 2002, the Irish Government placed a charge on plastic bags. In no time at all, this reduced their usage by over 90%. According to ‘The Guardian,’ at least 40 countries, States and major cities have followed their lead in taking steps to reduce, ban or phase-out plastic check-out bags.
London has a reputation as ‘the shopping capital of the world’. Yet in November 2007, leaders from 33 London councils approved a bill to seek a plastic bag ban across the capital.
It is China that will be getting the biggest result – by June 2008 they will be banning the giving away of free plastic bags. To put this in perspective, China uses more plastic bags every four days than Australia uses every year.
Despite the impression given by industry, not all plastic bag litter is deliberately dropped by people. A Government report estimated that up to 47% of litter that escapes from landfill is wind-borne plastic – much of this is plastic bags. As such, the problem of plastic bag litter is not one that can be solved by litter fines.
Landfill sites employ people who go around trying to pick up errant plastic bags. Due to the lightness and design of plastic bags, even the very best run landfills are unable to stop the wind blowing plastic bags out into local communities and the wider environment.
Plastic bags are a major contaminant in Australia’s kerbside recycling system. When people put recyclables into plastic bags, it creates major problems for recycling companies and can stop that material from being recycled. The ban in South Australia will massively reduce this problem.
Paper bags, however, can be recycled in kerbside recycling systems all over Australia. On top of this, paper bags are able to include paper that is recycled from Australia’s kerbside and office recycling collections.
Since our plastic bag campaign began back in 2002, over 25 billion plastic bags have been used by Australians. Billions of these plastic bags have been imported into Australia from Asia and other parts of the world. This is not good for our balance of payments or our environment. Far better is to use reusable bags or, where possible, recyclable paper bags that are made here in Australia from sustainably farmed and accredited sources and accredited fibre and manufacturing sources.
Australians currently use over 4 billion plastic bags a year. If you times this by the number of years it takes for them to break down, you realise just how many billions of plastic bags are currently sitting in landfills and the environment. Over time, a phase-out or ban will reduce this problem, however, there is still too much plastic of all kinds floating about in our environment.