Jacinda Ardern says New Zealand will ban plastic bags

[Equinox Moon]

Source: The Guardian

Retailers given six months to stop providing lightweight plastic bags or face fines of up to NZ$100,000.

New Zealand will ban single-use plastic bags over the next year, the government has announced.

"Every year in New Zealand we use hundreds of millions of single-use plastic bags. A mountain of bags, many of which end up polluting our precious coastal and marine environments and cause serious harm to all kinds of marine life, and all of this when there are viable alternatives for consumers and business."

Ardern said it was clear that New Zealanders wanted action to be taken on this problem, citing a petition signed by 65,000 people who called for a ban.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/10/jacinda-ardern-says-new-zealand-will-ban-plastic-bags

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Way to go NZ! I really like this country. I would expatriate if it wasn't so far away.

Check it out - to took only 65,000 signatures to affect change! I remember some of the petitions on the WH website (Obama era) with 100's of thousands of signatures in order to get a reply posted.

[dbackjon]

1. Good for them

One note - 65,000 out of 4.8 million residents would be same percentage as 4.4 million signing here - about 1.3% of the population

[Judi Lynn]

2. Their progress should encourage the rest of the world. So much depends upon it. n/t

[cstanleytech]

3. I wish the US would ban them and single use plastic bottles.

Besides I think drinks like coke tasted much better when they were in glass.

[radical noodle]

5. They did and they taste better

in cans than in plastic too. Cans are easily recyclable. I was so disappointed when they stopped using glass bottles. I always returned the empties to the store.

[cstanleytech]

6. I prefer glass and I never minded that they required a deposit because I knew as long

as I returned them I could get my money back.
Granted the bottles need to be checked for damage and washed but I suspect their long term environmental impact was less than plastic is.

[radical noodle]

7. I sometimes believe they stopped using glass bottles

because people became too lazy to return the bottles.

[cstanleytech]

8. My bet is they did it because plastic was cheaper at the time not to mention most

of the public never gave much thought to the environmental problems it could cause down the road thus the reason for little public backlash.

[Harker]

10. Yep. It's about money.

Glass also weighs a lot by comparison, and moving it around eats into the profits, too.

[jmowreader]

15. It's all about weight

A load of Coca-Cola weighs 43,000 pounds. The Coca-Cola Company doesn't want 8,000 pounds of it to be bottles.

[paleotn]

9. That's right....

I remember distinctly the first time I bought a 16 ounce in plastic. I had no idea coke had switched packaging and really didn't notice until I opened it. Huge let down. There's not much better than ice cold coke in glass on a hot sunny day.

[radical noodle]

4. I'm old enough to remember

when we thought plastic bags were more environmentally friendly than paper bags. Too bad we didn't think farther ahead.

[7962]

11. I was about to mention that! Environmentalists pushed for the plastic bag to start with!!

But a paper bag will easily decompose without becoming a hazard. I used to bag groceries as a kid and I remember all the hullabaloo about "save the trees" and that was the move to plastic. You're right; nobody thought about what would happen LATER
This is a good example of going backwards being a good idea

[LanternWaste]

12. This sourced article does not support premise.

"Environmentalists pushed for the plastic bag to start with!!"

Rather, corporations like Exon-Mobil wanted higher profits that the plastic bags could bring...

"By the end of 1985, 75 percent of supermarkets were offering plastic bags to their customers. Customers still preferred paper bags—plastic held just 25 percent of the market—but Mobil was working to change that..."

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/how-the-plastic-bag-became-so-popular/381065/

"But the T-shirt plastic bag didn’t really start encroaching on the paper grocery bag’s territory until 1982, when two of country’s largest supermarket chains, Safeway and Kroger, made the switch from paper to plastic...."

https://www.triplepundit.com/2014/11/brief-history-plastic-bag/

And this line seems counter to your premise...
"Soon after plastic bags appeared in grocery stores, environmental advocates raised concerns about their effect on the planet. Like other plastic products, plastic bags are made from oil and natural gas – resources that have significant environmental, political and social impacts during extraction and production...."

[radical noodle]

14. That may all be true

but at the time, environmentalism played a big part. I can't tell you who was pushing the anti-paper bag theories, but environmentalism was certainly tied to it.

Paper bags aren't that much of a better choice, except for degrading faster. The best choice is the reusable bag that we take to the store with us.

https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/paper-plastic1.htm

[radical noodle]

13. At the time it was about saving forests

and the environment... at least that's what they said it was about.