The Great Plastic Bag Conspiracy...by Thomas the Taxi

Following on from the last article have you ever thought about plastic bags? 
Why is it necessary for some shops to charge for the use of plastic bags to take shopping home?


Marks and Spencer's have pioneered the plastic bag pricing rip off by charging customers 5p for each bag when purchasing food. Ironically if you purchase clothing, the items are placed in thick plastic bags at no extra cost to the consumer.


As M&S don't supply plain unprinted bags, we are then expected to walk around the shopping areas advertising their establishment. Not only free advertising, we have actually paid them for this privileged. 


We are told by environmentalists, the reason for the charge on food shopping bags is to dissuade us from using them. Yet the ones we are to be charged for, are the ones we need most of all. You can carry a shirt, dress or coat on a hanger, but with food shopping, you need a bag. 


The plastic bags we need to use with our shopping from supermarkets, will soon be charged for as standard practise. Its ironic that in most supermarkets cardboard boxes are broken down and taken away by store staff! 
If they don't want to use so many plastic bags, why are boxes not given away freely? Could it be that cardboard recycling leads to increased profits... 

The Green Lobby will say, why supply plastic bags at all? 
Why not give out paper bags and boxes?

Research has shown that paper bags are actually less environmentally friendly than plastic, something that is just ignored by the Greens...See bottom post, Top 10 Myths About Plastic Bags.


We are shown footage of plastic bags blowing along High Street's, fields and meadows and clogging streams, with the obligatory Green Party assembly member screaming "We must banned the production of these evil articles".


Yet supermarkets bags are not the ones seen flying about the high streets and clogging rivers in the TV footage.
On closer inspection the small plastic bags seen in this footage are more often than not, associated with fast food outlets such as Kebab shops, Kentucky fried chicken, Greggs and other fast food type takeaway shops. Why don't they take a leaf out of Mac Donald's and supply paper bags (although these can also be seen blowing in the wind).


Activists will tell you how it takes 1000 years for these bags to bio-degrade, although most supermarkets now use a biodegradable or recyclable bag. 
How do they know? 
Plastic bags have only been around for about 40 years.
Plastic bags were introduced in the late1970's when there was much concern about the amount of trees being cut down to provide us with paper bags. At the time Global Warming wasn't an issue as we were told by climatologists that the globe was cooling too rapidly and we were about to enter a new ice-age.

One of the worse greenhouse gasses, is methane. It is largely produced when household rubbish rots on landfill sites. Placing household waste in plastic sacks, slows down the production of methane. Most people recycled their supermarket bags by filling them with rubbish and lining kitchen waste bins with them. 
So, by removing plastic bags from the market place, all we will be doing is speeding up the production of greenhouse gasses like Methane. 

Editorial Comment:

Before I start getting loads of comments saying "what has this got to do with us!", I have used this subject as an example to show how the wool is being pulled over our eyes by people with an agenda.

The plastic bag has been the subject of attack from the green lobby which has been picked up by large retailers as a way to maximise profit, 
e.g. They don't have to produce as many and they get paid for something they used to give away as free.

The agenda behind Boris's clean air strategy is emotional blackmail and has not been researched properly by scientific experts. The Mayor will of course say, his office has done all the research necessary, but this is not the case.

The scrapping of 3600 taxis by Dec 2012, is designed to get drivers to buy new models and revitalise the fortunes of ailing manufacturers and get rid of older models as London is put on show to the world during the 2012 Olympic Games. This has little to do with air quality.

TtT.     

Top 10 Myths About Plastic Bags

Myth 1: Plastic Bag Bans Are Spreading Like Wildfire Across The Country.

Fact: No. In fact, plastic bags have not been banned anywhere, not even in San Francisco. San Francisco is requiring that consumers use compostable plastic bags instead of 100% recyclable bags. Contrary to popular belief, there is a growing movement to increase access to recycle plastic bags – not eliminate them. New Jersey, Connecticut, and cities in California have all taken recent action to table legislation that would ban certain types of plastic bags and instead are now looking to implement plastic bag recycling programs.

Myth 2: Paper Grocery Bags Are A Better Environmental Choice Than Plastic Bags.

Fact: Plastic bags are 100% recyclable and for all environmental impacts related to air emissions, water emissions and solid waste – those of paper bags are significantly greater than that of plastic grocery bags:

• Plastic bags use 40% less energy to produce and generate 80% less solid waste than paper. (1)
• Paper bags generate 70% more emissions, and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags. (2)
• Even paper bags made from 100% recycled fiber use more fossil fuels than plastic bags. (3)

Myth 3: Plastic Bags Are The Largest Component Of Landfills And The Primary Component Of Litter.

Fact: The item most frequently encountered in landfills is paper—on average, it accounts for more than 40% of a landfill’s contents. (4)
 Newspapers alone take up as much as 13% of landfill space. (5)
Cigarette butts, chewing gum, and candy wrappers account for about 95% of all litter in the English-speaking world. (6)
 Education, as well as responsible use and disposal of all materials and products, is the key to reducing litter.

Myth 4: Plastic Grocery Bags Take 1,000 Years To Decompose In Landfills.

Fact: Virtually nothing – not paper, food, plastic or even compostable or bio degradable products – decompose in today’s landfills, because they are actually designed to be as stable and dry as possible. Research by William Rathje, who runs the Garbage Project, has shown that when excavated from a landfill, newspapers from the 1960s can be intact and readable.

Myth 5 Plastic Bags Feed America’s Addiction To Oil.

Fact: Plastic bags are extraordinarily energy-efficient to manufacture. Less than .05% of a barrel of oil goes into making all the plastic bags used in the US while 93% – 95% of every barrel of crude oil is burned for fuel and heating purposes. (7) 
Although they are made from natural gas or oil, plastic bags actually consume less fossil fuels during their lifetime than do compostable plastic and paper bags. (8)

Myth 6: Compostable Bags Can Degrade In Backyard Composts.

Fact: In order to breakdown, compostable bags must be sent to an industrial composting facility, not backyard piles or municipal composting centers. There are very few of these facilities in the U.S. and where these facilities are not available, compostable bags will sit in landfills because they can’t be recycled.

Myth 7: For People Who Live Near Water, Paper Bags Are The Environmentally Friendly Choice To Protect Marine Wildlife.

Fact: Since paper bag production has more negative environmental impacts related to air emissions, water emissions and solid waste than plastic grocery bags, they’re not a solution. Recycling and proper disposal of all products would make sure that any threat to the environment, including wildlife, would be reduced.

Myth 8: Low Recycling Rates For Plastic Bags Prove Recycling Them Doesn’t Work.

Fact: Recycling does work. The problem is not everyone knows that plastic grocery bags are 100% recyclable and not everyone has access to plastic bag recycling in their community. A national at-store plastic bag recycling program would bring the recycling solution to everyone and increase rates. One Southern supermarket chain has such a program, and recycles more than 20% of the volume of plastic bags that it provides to customers.

Myth 9: Recycling Plastic Bags Is Too Expensive.

Fact: The price of not recycling them is high. Recycling can help save resources and minimize the amount of waste going to landfills. Also, recycling helps reduce litter, as bags are contained and stored. Its worth noting that it takes 91% less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than it takes to recycle a pound of paper. (9)

Myth 10: There’s No Demand For Recycled Plastic.

Fact: Today there is a growing market for recycled plastic that didn’t exist 15 years ago. It’s also cheaper now to use recycled plastic than to obtain new materials, increasing potential for more recycling of used plastic bags. Recycled plastic grocery and shopping bags are currently being made into new consumer products such as clean new plastic shopping bags, outdoor decking and railing products.

Source:

1. U.S. EPA website, (www.epa.gov/region1/communities/shopbags.html)

2. Ibid

3. REPA of Polyethylene and Unbleached Paper Grocery Sacks, Prepared for the Solid Waste Council, Franklin Associates Report, June 1990

4. U.S. EPA website, (www.epa.gov/msw/paper.htm)

5. U.S. EPA website, (http://www.epa.gov/msw/faq.htm)

6. Litter Composition Survey of England, October 2004, produced by ENCAMS for INCPEN (www.incpen.org/pages/userdata/incp/LitterCompSurvey24Jan2005.pdf).

7. Chemical Market Associates, Inc.

8. Évaluation des impacts environnementaux des sacs de caisse Carrefour (Evaluation of the Environmental Impact of Carrefour Merchandise Bags), Prepared by Price-Waterhouse-Coopers/Ecobilan (EcoBalance), February 2004, #300940BE8, (www.ademe.fr/htdocs/actualite/rapport_carrefour_post_revue_critique_v4.pd)

9. U.S. EPA website, (www.epa.gov/region1/communities/shopbags.html)