Saying goodbye to plastic bags

Tag : plastic recycled

As Australian politicians debate whether to ban or tax single useplastic shopping bags there are signs the rising price of oil maybe acting as a brake on their wasteful use.
With oil surging towards US$200 a barrel, Australians are nowpaying a high hidden price for the convenience of the single useplastic shopping bag.
It only takes around a teaspoon of oil to make one single-useplastic shopping bag.
But with Australians using 4 billion plastic bags a year (360billion worldwide) that is a lot of oil, and a lot of money, to bethrowing away.
Greens Senator Christine Milne, whose party has introduced a billto levy plastic bags, says consumers might have to start makingsome hard choices between keeping their 'free' plastic bags orpaying even more for petrol.

Steve Wright, from the Polymer Co-operative Research Centre, saysconsumers are yet to make that link.
''I'm not sure many people know the same feedstock [oil] that goesinto filling their petrol tanks is also used to make plasticbags,'' he says.
The International Energy Agency estimates the plastics andpackaging industry now gobbles up around 8% of total global oilproduction.
Due to public awareness campaigns about their visual andenvironmental impact, plastic bag use in Australia has dropped by45%. But that's far short of the 93% reduction in Ireland wheresingle-use bags have been taxed since 2002.

In China their use has been banned outright from the start of June.
Richard Evans from the Australian Retailers Association saysconsumers want the convenience of plastic bags even if they don'tknow what their true cost is.

But if politicians, motorists and some shoppers aren't joining thedots there are some packaging businesses and retailers who are.

Green Bag is an Australian-based SME helping consumers around theworld make more effective use of an increasingly expensiveresource.

It makes branded reusable plastic shopping bags for big nameclients such as Target, ANZ, Master Foods, Red Cross and KeepAustralia Beautiful.