[Sosfbay-discuss] Fwd: London, other UK cities ban plastic bags (Independent)

[Drew Johnson]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [usgp-media] London, other UK cities ban plastic bags (Independent)
From:    "Scott McLarty" <scottmclarty at yahoo.com>
Date:    Wed, November 14, 2007 22:26
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London joins national campaign to banish the
curse of the plastic bag

By Martin Hickman, Consumer Affairs Correspondent

The Independent, 14 November 2007
http://environment.independent.co.uk/green_living/article3157780.ece


British shops hand out a staggering 13 billion
every year. But after a decision by 33 London
councils yesterday, plastic bags could be soon be
consigned to history, unmourned by anyone who
cares about cleaning up the environment.

Eighty villages, towns and cities, including
Brighton and Bath, have introduced or are
considering a ban on them since shops in the
Devon market town of Modbury went "plastic bag-
free". But yesterday represented the most
significant move yet. The capital is now on
board.

All 33 authorities in the London Councils group
voted for legislation to prevent shops in the
capital handing out free plastic bags. In the
next fortnight Westminster Council will present a
private Bill to the House of Commons which would
apply to every London shop from the humblest
newsagent to Harrods.

Shoppers clutching large numbers of bags in
London's West End could become a thing of the
past; instead they will be asked to use sturdy
reusable plastic "bags for life" or cotton or
string hold-alls. London's authorities said they
needed to halt the environmental damage done by
plastic bags, which use oil and landfill space
and kill marine wildlife.

The ban is likely to be opposed by big retailers
such as Tesco which prefer encouragement rather
than coercion to change behaviour. But
campaigners point to international trailblazers
that have already banned the bags, places as
diverse as Tasmania and Tanzania, which this year
were joined by Paris and San Francisco. London
would be the biggest urban centre yet to take the
plunge.

Peter Robinson, director of Waste Watch, said:
"We've seen successful action taken on carrier
bags all across the world from Australia to
Zanzibar, and now it's time for London to take a
lead on this issue in the UK."

Although the London ban could take years to come
into force, the groundswell of opposition to free
disposable bags is unmistakable – and perhaps
unstoppable. Major retailers have signed an
agreement with the Government's waste body, Wrap,
to reduce the environmental impact of plastic bag
use by 25 per cent by the end of next year. They
are making the bags more lightweight, exploring
biodegradable options, and discouraging their
routine distribution.

Tesco says it has cut its use of carrier bags by
1 billion to 3 billion after a high-profile
campaign to give loyalty points to shoppers
reusing them. Today Sainsbury's will announce in
its financial results that it has cut plastic bag
use by 10 per cent as a result of having signs at
the checkouts asking shoppers to consider the
environment and promoting jute and cotton bags.
Marks & Spencer is to chargeshoppers 5p a plastic
bag after a trial in Northern Ireland that cut
the number handed out by 66 per cent.

The Government says it is monitoring the efforts
in commerce, but is set against a plastic bag tax
of the kind introduced five years ago in Ireland,
where the number of carrier bags has fallen by 90
per cent. Officials claim there is evidence that
Irish shoppers are using other types of plastic
instead. The plastic revolution was started by a
BBC camerawoman, Rebecca Hosking, from Modbury,
after she had seen the deaths of albatross chicks
that had eaten plastic. In the absence of
government action, 43 traders in the town decided
to start their own "plastic bag-free town" in
May. The shops refused to give out free plastic
bags, charging 5p for a cornstarch bag, 10p for a
paper one or £1.50 for a cotton carrier.

Trade did not fall off, and the six-month
experiment proved so successful that Modbury has
made the change permanentand made the carrying of
a plastic bag an antisocial activity.

Other towns such as Hebden Bridge in West
Yorkshire and Overton in Hampshire have followed
suit, and the idea of going "plastic bag-free" is
taking hold elsewhere, such as in Brighton, where
councillors last month called on the city's
retailers to stop giving out bags.

The plastics industry insisted that such bans
were environmentally harmful, arguing that re-use
of plastic bags – to line bins, wrap packed
lunches and scoop up dogs' mess – made them more
environmentally friendly than cotton
alternatives, and that the oil used to make the
HDPE (high density polyethylene) bags came from a
by-product of oil.

Nonetheless, the industry says that unnecessary
use of bags is a problem, and is calling on
shoppers to consider whether they really need
them. Peter Woodall, of the Packaging and
Industrial Films Association, said: "We are
losing the battle in terms of hearts and minds of
the public, who now certainly believe that the
plastic bag is a hazard to health and the
environment and something we need to eradicate
from society."

Ms Hosking, who started the Modbury experiment,
said that plastic bags were the start of a
campaign against disposable consumer culture.
"It's our consumption of everything – whether
it's petrol, water or consumer goods – that is
driving virtually every environmental problem on
the planet and it needs to stop. We have shown
that individual people can make a difference,"
she said.

A local convenience, a global problem

Anyone who has seen The Graduate, one of the
great movie classics, will remember vividly the
single-word piece of advice that Dustin Hoffman's
confused young career-hopeful, Benjamin Braddock,
receives from a well-meaning family friend:
Plastics.

Asked to clarify what exactly he means, the
family friend, Mr McGuire, explains: "There's a
great future in plastics." And in 1967, when the
film was made, no doubt there was.

Unfortunately, in the succeeding years, many
aspects of what then seemed to be those
oh-so-convenient, revolutionary, synthetic
materials have come to appear not a blessing but
a curse – and plastic bags are high on the list.

The trouble with them is that they have the vices
of their virtues. They are incredibly cheap and
light, and so are produced in astronomical,
scarcely credible, numbers; and remarkably tough
for their lightness, they are incredibly
persistent in the environment once we have
finished with them.

Nobody knows exactly how many plastic bags are
consumed annually worldwide, but a good estimate
is between 500 billion and 1,000 billion, which
comes out at more than a million a minute – and
then they're all thrown away. But as they do not
biodegrade, huge numbers don't disappear. They
have become the most ubiquitous item of litter.
They are the icons of the throwaway society.

In parts of Africa, there are so many blowing
through the bush that a cottage industry has
sprung up in harvesting windblown bags and using
them to weave hats, or even more bags.

But in some parts of the environment, they
represent a lethal threat to wildlife, in
particular in the oceans. According to the
British Antarctic Survey, they have spread from
Spitzbergen north of the Arctic Circle to the
Falkland Islands at the other end of the globe.

When floating they can resemble jellyfish, and so
are often mistakenly eaten by sea turtles and
other marine mammals and birds, with fatal
results.

No one denies plastic bags are satisfyingly
convenient. But as Billy Joel sang, you pay for
your satisfaction somewhere along the line.

Michael McCarthy






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