Daily Wail plastic bag campaign

[F]

And the methane produced every time the cows fart of course...

[David Hansen]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:11:47 GMT someone who may be Roger wrote this:-

Plastic bags are much of what escapes from landfill sites. Some have fences to try and catch them, but some blow over. They can be blown huge distances, though most don't get too far.

They are not just blown out of landfill sites, some are liberated by animals of various sorts.

illustrates what happens next, I like the title of the page, "This green and plastic land in pictures".

On that page is a link entitled, "Watch Hawaii - Message In The Waves" which is a short clip from the film I have mentioned before

[David Hansen]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:18:01 -0000 someone who may be "Tim Downie" wrote this:-

That is very much the case. People queue up to sign petitions on the subject of packaging, including plastic bags, these days.

[David Hansen]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 08:32:20 -0800 (PST) someone who may be [e-mail] wrote this:-

They certainly don't seem to want to. All that cheap advertising for a start. However, supermarkets can sometimes be influenced by the opinion of customers, campaigning groups and government.

Are they? How is that?

[teddysnips]

No they're not. I take a handful of plastic bags with me when I go to Tesco, and use them at the self-service checkout. No problems apart from the fact that the barcode scanners seem woefully inadequate compared with the ones on the manned checkouts.

Put it all back in reusable milk bottles.

When I buy it (which is rarely, since I prefer homemade) mine comes in a paper bag. But if you buy your bread from a supermarket you get what you deserve.

[Derek Geldard]

I thought it was about Harriet Harman's donations scandal.

DG

[Ron Lowe]

car ( pouring out carbon.. ).

A few interesting points from there, and some of my own...

1) Many supermarkets today use bio-degradable bags. I don't know how effective the bio-degradability is. 2) Many people re-use the shopping bags as bin-liners. If they don't get them, they will buy ( non-biodegradable ) binliners instead, increasing the uptake of non-biodegradables. Probably worse than the shopping bags. 3) We get most of our shopping from Tesco Direct. They collect last weeks bags from you when they do this weeks delivery. I've no idea what they do with them. Feed them to rare turtles, perhaps? 4) My pet hate is not these bags, but the excessive over-packaging of most products.

Examples:

The kids got a nintendo wii a while ago. They were itching to play it when it arrived. I couldn't believe the packaging. Outer cardboard sleve. Inner cardboard box, containing:

2 cardboard trays, containing: Various items individually plastic-wrapped, which also had: Cables attached, with were also individually wrapped and had plastic cable ties; Connectors on each end of each cable had further foam wrap and elastic bands or tape. ( yes, the cables had 3 plastic bags each. One over tha cable, and one over the connector at each end.

It took me a good 15 mins just to remove all the bloody packing.

Costco also drive me mad.

All the smallish high-value things they sell are packed in large un-openable hard clear plastic which you need major tools to open, and even then expect to cut yourself. This then opens to reveal the individual items from the multi-pack, again individually wrapped in the same un-openable plastic. After the recursive opening of all the items, you have a bin-full of plastic and shredded hands. ( no, I don't mean the bin is full of shredded hands. ) I'd like to make the MD of costco open one of these packages on live TV.

[Clot]

Surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet!

[David Hansen]

On Thu, 28 Feb 2008 22:20:12 -0000 someone who may be "Ron Lowe" wrote this:-

Some started relatively recently using degradable plastic bags, following pressure on them. Note that this does not necessarily mean they are bio-degradeable. There is a confusion of terms, which some are exploiting. gives some definitions.

Many bags advertised as degradable degrade by being broken into smaller and smaller bits by inorganic chemical activity. That means they will not kill as many animals as an "ordinary" bag, but they still have all the other problems of plastic bags.

Well, they could do that, but it depends what is lined. If they were to just line their residual waste bin then the bin-liner would last for at least four emptyings. Compare the volume of plastic in one bin-liner lasting for several emptyings with the volume of plastic in the bags that were inside.

Smart shoppers will have an alternative approach. Around here the council collects cardboard, paper, glass, clothes, tins and types 1 and 2 plastic at or near the house (they will also collect other things via a trip to their large centres). With that lot gone what remains is largely some types of plastic and food.

Food can be divided into compostable and non-compostable. The compostable can go in a compost bin. The non-compostable can go in a green cone or wormery . Around here the council say they will be collecting food for central composting at some time in the future, particularly useful for those without gardens.

Having got rid of the food that leaves some types of plastic and the odd item. This can be placed into unlined bins inside the house and then tipped directly into the residual waste bin. If someone really wants to line their bin(s), not that I would recommend it, then something like is better than a "free" bag.

In mixed company people sometimes make guarded references to "womem's things", with many men being very squeamish about them. These must be disposed of in plastic bags is the unspoken assumption but indicates otherwise.

Excess packaging is part of the same waste reduction process as plastic bags. Producers are not complying with the law on minimising packaging, but are being put under pressure by various campaigns.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I went to the 'green queue' with our bags..the checkout lady said 'very good' but seemed very surprised and somehow upset when I pointed out that my choice of bag saved at best a teaspoonful of plastic, and that every single item in the shopping cart came in some kind of plastic wrapping, apart from the tins and boxed up cereels, and that if Waitrose really was concerned about plastic, it might care to re-think its product sourcing strategies..

It's more greenwash.

Theres piss all material in plastic bags and apart from te fact that it is an a particularly visible form its probably relatively harmless and in any case why not burn it?

There are so MANY more important issues..

[Derek Geldard]

You'd be making a mistake if you were to assume all self scan systems were alike. The ones near us dispense bags of known weight or tare them off at some stage in the proceadings. If customers take handfulls of sundry old bags and try to fit them onto the machine there is a possibility of all sorts of problems occuring.

What if we all did it ?

Have you done a full energy audit of doing this?

Would you then be so kind as to show your working out ?

It takes all tastes. Anyway as above please show us the results of your energy audit and uour working out.

So, soon stale.

Ambiguous comment.

DG

[Derek Geldard]

I've not seen that. Presumable they are incapable of doing anything more productive.

What proportion of the population do this ?

The ordinary poulation that is, not a selected population that over represents the green loonies by 100,000 -1

DG

[David Hansen]

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:22:04 +0000 someone who may be Derek Geldard wrote this:-

Excellent, abuse. Do keep it up.

[David Hansen]

On Fri, 29 Feb 2008 10:14:37 +0000 someone who may be The Natural Philosopher wrote this:-

Any individual action is always likely to only have a small effect, but that doesn't mean it is not worth doing. Lots of actions each with a small effect can add up to a big effect. There are many examples in history, for example the humbling of the greatest empire the world has ever seen, which led to the worlds largest democracy and two other states. The first organised action in that, eventually successful, campaign was a small march over the issue of a salt tax. It took 17 years for the campaign to be successful, though there was a world war for some of that time.

You would be correct if campaigners were only campaigning on plastic bags. However, they are not.

One of these campaigners, in a speech she gave a month ago stated, "I know that removing plastic bags from our lives won't make us a sustainable culture anymore than saving the polar bear will stop global warming. However, plastic bags and polar bears will make us all stop and think about the bigger picture." I think that is a good way of putting it.

[nafuk]

there is a one sentence solution to a problem then it is very likely that no all the factors have been considered e.g. plastic bags are bad for the environment, so ban plastic bags. Plastic bags are good in some respect, and bad in others. See here for an interesting article

food is compostable. Obviously chicken carcasses should be used to make soup etc. before discarding. See here for an interesting discussion and explanation discussion focuses on human waste composting together with total food waste composting in the US which has lots of wild animals. You just need a wire lid on the compost bin to preventanimals digging around etc. Check out the pictures of their veggies!

To help the planet we need to stop buying things that require recycling. Just because we can recycle things does not make it ok to buy them! Just because we can buy cheap plane tickets does not mean it is ok to buy them! etc.

We need to buy seasonal local produce. This can be difficult when supermarkets say its local but the item has been shipped a 100 miles to a packaging and distribution centre, then back to the local supermarket. If you still need to buy tomatoes in the winter then perhaps consider those flown in from Spain etc. Why? Locally grown toms will have been grown in green houses which may use more energy to keep warm etc. than the energy used to fly-in foreign toms.

A few things we can do. Remove excess packaging and leave it in the trolley. The Women's Institute is involved in this. A one day coordinated mass protest in Denmark (?) resulted in a change in the law for food packaging.

"When it's yellow, let it mellow. When it's brown, flush it down". A saying from the USA from 30+ years ago. Not just for people with water meters either. A lot of water (and hence energy) is wasted when flushing the toilet. Even better, start composting your poo which use hardly any water. We may have to do this in the future anyway as drinking water becomes scarcer. Incidently, urine makes is a good accelerator (a helper/initiator for the composting process) for composting.

Don' fly

Buy seasonal foods

Cycle to work. You will save money, be less stressed, live longer and be more active and alert in your old age. Why get in your car to cycle to the bike at the gym (the gym also used lots of energy to get built, so going to a gym is bad for the environment notwithstanding the fuel used to get there).

Turn lights off.

Don't drink bottled water. It takes 6 liters of water and one liter of oil to make one liter of bottled water!

[Mark]

Trouble is with this is that they punch holes in the bottom of all the bags.

Agreed.

M.

[Mark]

I think the philosophy is that, if the bags are free, then the punters think they are worthless and throw them away. Even if the shop charges a "token" amount for the bags the chavs might realize they can be reused.

Whether this approach will work I know not.

M.

[Derek Geldard]

Don't do numbers, do you Dave ?

DG

[The Natural Philosopher]

Right. Never mind achieving a result. Let's make sure we all know what the question is eh?

As if the worlds problems will go away once we are aware of them.

How many years ha Bob Geldof been banging on about famine etc.?

How many years has war and violence been over reported in the West?

and have they gone away?

No.

Typical wishy-washy Nu Laber Spik. Lets all feel GOOD about our pollution. Instead of getting rid of it.

[Huge]

Religious zealots rarely do.