Those who claim that waste projects are something from lentil munching, woolly minded people who don't live in the real world might like to look at the Daily Wail for today and their campaign against plastic bags.
Presumably the Daily Wail has gone soft for making this the main story for today.
It merely shows that they believe their readers (their income) have succumbed to the greenwash.
On 27 Feb 2008 09:30:37 GMT someone who may be "Bob Eager" wrote this:-
What greenwash is that?
Sorry, what's the story? I'm constitutionally unable to read anything in the Daily Shit, whether on-line or chip paper.
On Wed, 27 Feb 2008 03:41:44 -0800 (PST) someone who may be snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote this:-
The title of the thread gives a clue.
Yabbut are they for 'em or agin 'em? With the Daily Shit you never can tell.
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:59:11 -0800 (PST) someone who may be snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote this:-
I'm sure you can use your initiative to find out, rather than expecting to be spoon-fed.
That would mean reading the Daily Shit in some form, and then I'd have to kill myself.
Plastic bags use less energy and material than paper. Their use saves ime and energy, far more than is used up by the bag itself. They are on balance a good thing. Shame theyre not perfect, but thats life.
NT
Probably true.
Matter of opinion. As someone who spends a fair bit of his life on the beach, on rural roads, riverside paths and generally out and about either running or dog walking, I see the wretched things everwhere. Burning a bt more oil to avoid such despoilation of the counrtyside & harm to wildlife is a small price to pay IMO. Better still, use resuable bags.
The supermarkets could have done a lot more by selling better reusable bags years ago. Nearly all ours were bought in French supermarkets and are much better designed & made than ones bought here.
Tim
But that's just littering. We already have laws to deal with that. Now if those laws aren't applied, that's a different matter. Maybe people who care about seeing litter strewn around should be lobbying the govt to get these laws enforced.
On a purely practical point, charging 5p per bag means almost nothing in terms of a weekly shopping bill. We typically spend about £50 p.w. in the supermarket and use maybe 4 or 5 carrier bags. That equates to an extra 25p on a £50 bill i.e. 0.5% - food inflation accounted for more than that in just January alone.
I remember all the talk last year (was it about this time?) when the question of plastic bags was raised initially. Lots of posturing and holier than thou speeches (tho' not in this NG, maybe we're too sensible). Then a few months later when it had all blown over I saw a mother with 2 toddlers at the checkout - she used 22 bags for her trolley load. I expect that once this fuss has died down (again) things will just return to normal.
You might find it rather easier to deal with the source of the litter than the litterer themselves - or do you really want to pay for the manpower required to stop it by enforcement?
clive
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 04:00:10 -0800 (PST) someone who may be snipped-for-privacy@care2.com wrote this:-
Not particularly anything to do with the campaign, as the articles make clear.
However, if one was to move to the energy argument you are simply regurgitating the arguments of the plastic bag manufacturing lobby. These arguments are bogus, as they assume that one plastic bag will be replaced by one paper bag of equivalent capacity which will also be used once. Nobody is proposing that and thus the arguments are simply a straw man.
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:56:51 GMT someone who may be Peter Lynch wrote this:-
That isn't how people see things elsewhere, or indeed in those places where plastic bags are charged for in the UK. What makes you think people in the UK are that different?
"Sensible" people in this newsgroup may like to work their way through to see if they wish to maintain their position. They can even download the whole 1 hour film if they wish, though they might well be unwilling or unable to grasp the point it is making.
Yes, that's true, However if (OK, it's a big "if") the govt was to slap a tax on plastic bags, then what they're really doing is taking the fine for littering - i.e. the deterrent that's supposed to stop it and applying it to everyone who takes a bag. Apart from implying that everyone's a criminal, or at least responsible for the litter, in some ways it could be construed as "Well, I've paid the fine, I might as well do the crime".
If the shops impose a surcharge, then they're just making a profit out of people's laziness/forgetfulness/unfortunate situation. While you may argue that they do this anyway, I don't see why they should be encouraged to do it more.
A better solution would be to make the cost of the bag redeemable. Most of the big players have their name stamped on the bag. If they were made to pay a bounty[1] for every one that was handed in, it might give an incentive for kids/crusties/OAPs to make a little money picking up the litter. It would also give people a reward for reusing them. In that case I can see that charging the customer would make sense.
[1] either as cash or credits to spend in the store, equal to the cost the original shopper paid.
Tesco have "green points", one for each bag you reuse (don't have to be Tesco bags). Trouble is I haven't a clue what difference, if any, there is between a "green point" and an ordinary "point" (other than the name). I've certainly not been aware of anything if bumf from Tesco.
Without knowing what difference, if any, there is, there is no real incentive to reuse any bags.
The message from Peter Lynch contains these words:
Not at all easy to enforce.
Yesterday wandering around a few fields I filled a carrier bag with wind blown rubbish, mostly bags of some sort or another, including the one I carried the rubbish home in. No idea where or when they were discarded other than it must have been up wind.
This morning when I went out to open the gates prior to going shopping I found that a pair of young morons had parked up in my gateway some time during the evening and tipped the debris from their picnic out of their car window. Luckily there was a plastic carrier blowing in the wind nearby so I didn't have much trouble clearing up their mess. How do I know they were young if I didn't see them? By the debris they left behind, which was typical 'young taste' and even included an unopened litre pack of some fruit juice as well as several smaller plastic bottles.
In the first instance above it is possible that the littering was by and large accidental. In the latter it must have been deliberate but the youngsters would have been exceptional if they had been so brazen that they deliberately littered while under observation by a third party.
Oh right, I must have missed the application of that particular law. I shant hold my breath waiting for it to happen though.
[...]
Not this time I don't think. A few years ago maybe but times have changed and people's attitudes are changing. Who would have ever thought that smoking could ever be banned in pubs 10 years ago, yet it's happened. We're all much more aware (well some of us anyway) of our environmental impact these days and I see the phasing out of plastic bags being much more widely supported now than it would have been even a couple of years ago.
Tim
they are critical to the operation of the self-scan checkouts which they wish to replace all their staff with.
On the other hand...adding top-up charges for "environmental protection" purposes is a nice idea...perhaps they should crank the price of milk up to =A35 a litre to try and mitigate the environmental damage being done by all these nasty plastic cartons. And the nasty cellophane that bread comes wrapped in...tsk tsk...=A310 per loaf for you sir!!
Mark.
On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:42:19 +0000 (GMT) someone who may be "Dave Liquorice" wrote this:-
explains this:
"Green Clubcard Points are just like the normal ones, but we call them ?Green? because we award them for certain activities that benefit the environment. You can redeem them in exactly the same way as normal Clubcard Points, and they are worth the same amount, too."
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