What's wrong with plastic bags?
Posted: 17.04.09 | Created by: Do Something
Plastic bags are a wasteful form of packaging that is often not essential. They are a problem for numerous reasons:
- as a single use disposable form of packaging, plastic bags are typically used for a short period of time, but can take hundreds of years to break down in landfill (1)
- plastic bags are an extremely visible and unsightly component of litter. If plastic bags continue to be used, the number of bags littering the environment will increase over time. It has been estimated that local and state governments around Australia spend more than $200 million per year picking up litter (2)
- the production of plastic bags accounts for some 20,000 tonnes of plastic polymer derived from non-renewable resources (3). While plastic bags can be recycled, only a very small proportion of plastic bags are collected and reprocessed
- plastic bags are considered to be a 'free' commodity. But a 2002 Sunday Telegraph report quoted industry figures saying that $100 million a year was being added to grocery bills to pay for the plastic bags that we get at the check-out
- plastic bags kill thousands of birds, whales, seals and turtles every year
- we’re using more plastic bags than ever before. The latest figures show that Australians still use over four billion plastic check-out bags a year. This represents an increase of 550 million plastic bags over the previous year’s
figures (4)
- plastic bags can block drains and are a major contaminant in kerbside recycling
- since 2002 over 25 billion plastic bags have been used by Australians. Most of these have been imported. (5)
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(1) Report to the National Packaging Covenant Council, National Plastic Bags Working Group, December 2002
(2) Plastic Shopping Bags – Analysis of Levies and Environmental Impacts, Nolan ITU Pty Ltd, December 2002
(3) Zero Waste SA
(4) Plastic Retail Carry Bag Use, Hyder Consulting, February 2008
(5) Ibid