Environment News
From "Maple Street Co-op News", Jun/Jul 2006

The Scourge of Plastic Shopping Bags
by Ruth Parnell, Co-op News Editor

In the lead-up to World Environment Day on 4 June, there was intense public discussion about plastic shopping bags. Sparking the debate was the release of a draft report, "Waste Generation and Resource Efficiency", by the Federal Government's Productivity Commission (PC) on 23 May. The Commission is encouraging further discussion and input before it completes its final report in October.

Suggestions from the PC – that "Recycling can be good up to a point" and that "the extent of this pollution [from plastic bags in landfills] has sometimes been exaggerated" – caused an outcry from environmental groups wanting to emphasise that plastic bag pollution is a major problem in open-air landfills. The report states that less than 1% of bags end up as litter, and the extent to which the bags harm wildlife is uncertain, but green groups argue that this 1% amounts to 75 billion blowing bags. It also says plastic bags have an important food safety role, and as many as 75% of households reuse them rather than throw them away.

In another move that made green groups see red, the PC is urging the Federal Government to scrap its plan to eliminate plastic shopping bags by the end of 2008, or at least says that the plan should not proceed unless it is supported by a transparent cost-benefit analysis.

Green groups say Australians use as many as six billion bags a year and far too many of them are dumped, posing a great threat to wildlife ingesting them.

Planet Ark's John Dee told ABC Radio: "Well, we know basically that...the second you get a gale, what happens is tens of thousands of plastic bags per landfill end up in the local community and usually end up out at sea. The problem is they look so much like jellyfish that...whales, turtles and other marine animals mistake them for food."

Commenting on the report, Federal Environment Minister Senator Ian Campbell said the Government is committed to making sure plastic bags are taken out of the litter stream. He also announced that supermarkets fell short of their two-year target to reduce plastic bag usage by 50%, but did reduce usage by 45%, or about three billion bags, by the end of last year.

We can all do our bit to reduce our use of plastic bags (remember, they are products of the oil and chemicals industries) by bringing our own bags with us when we go shopping – a stance that Maple Street Co-op has been promoting for many years. You can always buy another Maple Street Co-op cloth bag next time you're in the shop – soon to be collectors' items when we change our logo!

[Sources: Productivity Commission, media release, http://www.pc.gov.au; ABC Radio AM & News Online, 23 May; ABC TV 7.30 Report, 1 June 2006; Lori Sturtz, "Save the Planet with BYO Bags!", MSC News, June/July 2002]

[From "Maple Street Co-op News", June/July 2006; published by The Maple Street Co-operative Society Ltd, 37 Maple Street, Maleny, Qld 4552, Australia, tel (07) 5494 2088, email maplest.coop@serv.net.au,
website http://www.maplestreetco-op.com.au]