From today, plastic bags are banned in the NT. The ACT will follow suit in November: in 2009 the ACT abandoned its 14-year old “No Waste by 2010” strategy and replaced it with a ban on plastic shopping bags. While campaigns against plastic bags have found a place in the public’s heart, will getting rid of them really make a difference?
Aspiring to zero waste
“No Waste by 2010” achieved a 70% reduction in waste to landfill in the first half of the program. It also created up to 200 new jobs in recycling. But in 2009 the then Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, announced that zero waste was only ever an “aspirational” goal and could not be achieved.
The axing of the zero waste policy has effectively handed over the Territory’s waste management to the waste industry. It has a vested interest in ensuring continued and increasing waste to landfill: that’s where the profits lie.
In place of the zero waste program the government proposed street level recycling bins in public areas and an organic waste recycling trial. To date neither of these initiatives has been realised.
In late 2010 the ACT government announced a ban on the use of polyethylene polymer (HDPE) plastic bags from 1 November 2011, with a transition period from 1 July. Heavier grade LDPE, or “boutique” bags, lightweight biodegradable plastics and the “barrier” bags that are provided in fruit and vegetable sections of supermarkets will not be affected.
High-profile, unsightly and cheap to ban
Lightweight, waterproof and with a high tensile strength, the popular HDPE “singlet” bags have come to represent a growing waste problem. Australians use a staggering 4 billion of them a year. Sixty million of those are in the ACT.
Despite the efforts of retailers – including Target, the now defunct Borders, and hardware giant Bunnings – to phase out plastic bag use, and despite the increasing use of alternative bags by consumers, plastic bags are still proliferating in landfills and littering the countryside.
They are among the most visible signs of waste as they blow across parks and paddocks, catch on fences and clog waterways.
Banning the use of these bags is drop-dead easy policy for a government whose record on waste management has gone from national leader in the 1990s to laggard.
Banning plastic bags will cost the government virtually nothing more than the cost of printing some informational flyers while pushing full responsibility for implementing the policy on to retailers and consumers.
The environment doesn’t care about ugly
But what environmental effect will the policy achieve?
The impact of HDPE bags on the marine environment is well documented. There have been numerous recorded instances where wildlife and domestic or farm animals have died as a result of ingesting them. But research by the Environment Agency of the UK indicates that the overall environmental impact of this plastic is considerably less than that of cotton or other environmentally friendly bags.
A life cycle analysis of a number of different types of shopping bags found that a cotton shopping bag would have to be used 131 times to be below the total global warming potential of a HDPE bag used only once.
Of course, a cotton bag can be used repeatedly for years and when it reaches the end of its life as a shopping bag could potentially be reused for something else and never end up in landfill. But the point made by the study is that the impact of HDPE bags in terms of global warming is negligible.
There is, however, the visual problem. The fences around landfills are invariably covered with these bags and they also pose litter problems around shopping centres, carparks and other open urban areas.
In effect this is a myopic policy response to a symptom and destined to be little more than a high profile litter campaign.
Concentrate on compost?
In terms of the total waste volume in the ACT plastic bags comprise only a very small fraction. While they are a highly visible component, 60 million plastic bags weigh less than 60 tonnes.
This is insignificant against the 30,000 tonnes of food that, according to the ACT Conservation Council, goes to landfill in the ACT every year from the commercial sector alone. That’s 30,000 tonnes of waste that could be diverted from landfill and recycled as compost if the government had the will and foresight to introduce a commercial composting facility.
The HotRot in-vessel composting unit currently in use at the Australian National University campus processes over 4 tonnes of food and other organic waste every week, reducing the waste to landfill from that one organisation by 230 tonnes a year.
The ACT opposition has raised concerns about the plastic bag ban policy with regards to hygiene and public health. This appears to be more about the opposition’s need to raise an objection than any real policy alternative.
It is highly unlikely that hygiene standards in individual households will be abandoned simply due to the absence of HDPE bags and there is no evidence that public safety could be compromised.
A waste of good policy
A better objection on the part of the opposition might be that the policy is a cynical exercise in shifting the onus for waste management from government to the commercial and community sectors while not addressing more environmentally pressing areas of waste.
Canberra is a very clean city. This is a source of civic pride for government and citizens alike. It is part of the city’s projected image as the national capital and as the city grows, it is something that will be increasingly difficult to maintain.
Banning HDPE shopping bags will reduce the visual impact of waste. But without integrated policy for reductions in other areas of the waste stream it is only a very small Band-aid on a very large sore.
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Comments (11)
MS2
(logged in via Twitter)
Marine litter is the primary environmental concern for plastic bags, but these bans don't address primary culprits like bait bags. Plastic bags get targeted because they're visible and iconic. Bags are a much softer target than more substantive waste / environmental issues that don't get the same attention.
To make a real difference at landfill, address organic matter and adopt gas capture and energy recovery from the emissions that do occur. The ACT and other jurisdictions with comprehensive approaches…
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Margo Saunders
(logged in via email @aapt.net.au)
Paul, there have been efforts in the UK directed at supermarkets -- see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/oct/11/sainsburys-excessive-packaging-case-dropped
In Australia, however, it is disappointing that there has been so little public pressure to reduce excessive packaging for a whole range of products, not only food. CHOICE, among others, seems to have dropped the ball badly on this; the last time CHOICE talked about excess packaging, it was in the context of 'deceptive' packaging rather than, 'Do we really need all this stuff?'
Margo Saunders
(logged in via email @aapt.net.au)
I was delighted to be given a biodegradable bag by a small local retailer recently, which goes to show that these things are possible. On the bag was printed information about its compliance with various international standards... and that it is compostable in 'professionally managed facilities' -- yet the ACT doesn't offer a household green waste collection service. Biodegradable/compostable bags (ones made from corn products have been used in the USA for decades) are handy in that they serve many of the purposes of plastic carrier bags (bin liners, misc. storage, etc.). I do wonder about the environmental credentials of the millions of polypropylene shopping bags that are now being provided.
geoff
(logged in via Twitter)
"A life cycle analysis of a number of different types of shopping bags found" You mention the results for cotton bags, but what else was examined?
And why no mention of the alternative to HDPE bags? Changing behaviour to a less convenient one is going to be difficult, so what alternatives are there that use the same consumer behaviour? Eg Target will sell you a 10c biodegradable bag.
We've been unsuccessful suggesting retailers to adopt alternatives to HDPE bags, sometimes you need to push.
Alex Lamb
Newsroom Assistant (logged in via email @gmail.com)
it's a very cheap and easy policy so why not? It wont revolutionise the way we dispose of waste but it's an improvement.
Paul Richards
Over packaging is part of the issue as well.
We all know under filled vitamin containers through to biscuit and cereal packets are over packaged. Often a ⅓ of the space in processed food is wasted on marketing material.
Why not combine a efficient system of packaging with banning the plastic bags to reduce waste?
Is it possible to make the supermarkets responsible for cutting back this waste?
A starting point may be banning plastic bags, and providing benches and bins so we could unwrap waste packaging.
Making supermarkets responsible for waste they encourage.
Greg Adcock
(logged in via email @me.com)
I agree generally with the notion that banning plastic bags is not a particularly adventurous or ground breaking measure. I live in the ACT and will have to adapt, since every plastic bag I get - and these I get when I forget my green bags - is reused as a bin liner. The fruit bags for lunches and storage.
So now I will be buying plastic disposable bin liners for the first time in a long time - or washing out and deodorizing bins (which is more friendly? My bins need an impact statement). So myself…
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Jane Rawson
(Editor, The Conversation)
Greg, I also struggle with the bin liner thing. I remember when I was a kid that my mum would cunningly fold newspaper to line the bin, then pull it out when full and use it as a wrapper for the rubbish. She tells me this only works if you have a small bin and empty it daily, or the paper gets soggy. Still haven't tried it myself, but it's one other option, particularly if you get the paper delivered.
Greg Adcock
(logged in via email @me.com)
Jane... not a bad idea and I already do the same with the compost bin and when it needs a clean the rinse water goes to the worm farm. I just get a couple of weekend papers but they'd be sufficient.
Perhaps using a paper liner could be made easier by bin design after all my indoor bins were bought because they were made to fit the supermarket bags.
In any case this also comes down to a home bin impact analysis. Using paper would take it out of recycling and into landfill. Didn't the productivity commission report on bag use? Did they weigh up these important considerations? Were my worms given due consideration?
Jane Rawson
(Editor, The Conversation)
Will somebody please think of the worms!
Joseph Ting
(logged in via Facebook)
The shopping public needs to realize that we already pay for our profligate and unthinking plastic bag consumption in the additional cost incorporated into the price of goods. Plastic bags are now viewed as socially unacceptable and the levy directly charged to the customer act as deterrent to plastic bag use. As the cost of plastic bags is incorporated into grocery prices by retailers, banning or deterring their use by imposing a consumer levy could reduce grocery bills.
Reusable and durable…
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