Really quite important:
The report also urged policymakers to ban plastic bags of any kind — not just thin ones. In some jurisdictions, it identified a “loophole” that has allowed grocery stores and other retailers to replace thin single-use plastic bags with thicker ones that are nominally reusable — even though research suggests that consumers don’t reuse the thicker bags in practice. In California, this loophole led to a net increase in the weight of plastic bags used per person between 2004 and 2021.
I’m not bringing my own carrier bags to the supermarket like some sort of tramp.
Also bring back free carrier bags.
In the good old days, I’d just dump all the surplus plastic etc in the incinerator.
After free single-use carrier bags were banned, the sale of small bin liners increased significantly, while the sale of large bin liners remained constant.
The effect was to ban plastic that was used twice — as a carrier bag and then a bin liner — and force people to buy plastic that was only used once (just as a bin liner) instead. Slow golf clap.
@ Steve
I don’t have to worry about whether people think I’m some sort of tramp so I do take my own carrier bag(s) when I go shopping.
For an example of a well-used thicker plastic bag, see Katie Price.
My fave was in Germany where they tax packaging to pay for recycling – the Grune-Punkt system. Mixed packaging has a higher tariff so Pringles simply increased the amount of cardboard until it was over 95% cardboard and thus taxed only as cardboard packaging.
Out of interest, how much are are you paying for your plastic bags in the UK now? When I was last there it was 5p & it was 5 cents at its inception here. I was in a supermarket recently & gave them the correct money for the purchases plus 5 cents for the bag. To be told bags are now 15 cents & another 10 cents por favor.
Still banned in Cyprus but some shops seem to be giving bags away again at checkout…
Slightly off topic but still environmental. We’re currently only get tap water 16 hours a day, weekdays. They’re dropping the pressure at 10PM until 7AM. Needless to say, climate change is being blamed. And yep, this is second winter of minimal rainfall. Basically, here, it rarely rains between March & October. We get about 42 days it rains a year, for around a foot & a half total. But this isn’t that unusual. What was unusual was 2012 & the floods.
Truth is, after a slight pause after the financial problems around 2010, they’re still building like fury. New developments are going up all over. The reservoirs were low before the drought. And I’m not sure they can even put any new dams in. Apart from the occasional spates from local run-off, most rivers are trickles where they reach the sea. There’s nothing more left to collect.
To return to the topic. I think we’ve got something more serious to worry about here than plastic waste.
BiS
30p in Tescos and Sainsburys, 60p in Morrisons (!) They are all thick plastic though and make excellent bin bags
This is what happens when we have 14 years of LibDem government and 30 years of Leninist War Communism.
Fear not BiS, Murphy has pronounced that an independent Scotland can export water as it receives quite a lot of it.
Any desalination plants on the North Coast yet?
Exporting water? Isn’t water the ultimate high-bulk low-value product? Instant bankruptcy.
I wonder how many people dropping in to buy just a few items now don’t bother as they don’t have a bag with them and the stores don’t have them either, locally they have gone from charging to not having bags at all in some places
I used to call in and buy stuff while out for a walk if I remembered something I needed. Now I don’t bother. Even if they have bags I’m not paying 30p on a few quid of groceries. It’s all pointless and inconvenient.
I used to call in and buy stuff while out for a walk if I remembered something I needed. Now I don’t bother. Even if they have bags I’m not paying 30p on a few quid of groceries. It’s all pointless and inconvenient.
I keep a few plastic bags in the pockets of my walking trousers.
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