China plastic bag ban 'has saved 1.6m tonnes of oil'

[The Straight Story]

China plastic bag ban 'has saved 1.6m tonnes of oil'

Banning flimsy plastic bags has been dismissed as a drop in the ocean when it comes to dealing with the world's environment problems, but multiplied on a China scale, it appears to have made a big difference.

A new report suggests restrictions on bag usage in the world's most populous nation have saved the equivalent of 1.6 million tonnes of oil, in the year since it was introduced.

Just ahead of the first anniversary of the ban, the China Chain Store and Franchise Association estimated it had saved the country 40 billion plastic bags.

According to their survey, plastic bag use has fallen by two thirds as consumers grow accustomed to bringing their own reusable bags.

The ban was introduced on 1 June 2008 to reduce "white pollution" – the popular term for plastic bags and styrofoam packaging. Under the new rules, the state forbade production of ultra-thin bags under 0.025mm thick and ordered supermarkets to stop giving away free carriers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/22/china-plastic-bags-ban-success

[ensho]

1. our plastic bag companies must pay lobbyist big bucks

the US, last to get with saving our planet and our lives.

I know the Obama team is ramping up, but the earth won't wait. the ice is melting as you read this. hear it?

[Deja Q]

2. AWESOME news!

:thumbsup:

Anything is a good start, and encouraging the right things means far more than gloom and doom bullshit that seems to be more popular around here these days.

Oh dear, did I say a swear and forget to add those little tassel-laden thingies to hide the naughty word? :blush:

[The Straight Story]

4. yes, now I will have to wash my eyes out with soap

it's gonna hurt ;)

[Cirque du So-What]

3. I've been railing against plastic bags for years

Sure, they're flimsy li'l fuckers individually, but consider that somewhere between 500 billion and 1 trillion are produced around the world every year!

[imdjh]

6. Toxic tumble weeds. They get into sewers, ponds, the bay, the gulf... nt

[imdjh]

5. I can't see a universal ban, but much much room for improvement here

I don't want to put meat or fish in my cloth bags. So I would see an exception for those items.

Another issue is that even with the over-packaging laws of a few years ago, we still see grossly over-packaged items. The individually wrapped baking potatoes really get me; not only is it stupid, they're expensive.

I get a ridiculous number of plastic bags when I forget my cloth bags. The checkers don't seem to care how many bags they use, which is odd because in the olden days of paper bags the complaint was often that baggers would just pile poorly matched items in one bag to full. My weekly groceries could easily fit in two cloth bags, plus one plastic bag for the stuff I shouldn't be buying anyway.

My town has switched from the rolls of virgin doggy doo doo bags to grocery bag bins where the dog owners stuff their grocery bags in as they walk by for themselves and others to use for poop. It's a start.

[kestrel91316]

8. I take cloth bags shopping whenever I can, even to drug stores and the office

supply place, etc. But STILL I seem to accumulate plastic shopping bags. They get reused, along with all the plastic food packaging bags and plastic wrappers for some magazines that come in the mail, as cat litter scoopings disposal bags, and into the landfill they go. They are weighted down by the litter, and go inside a plastic trash bag to boot, so I am confident they won't wind up in the ocean anytime soon. Maybe in the 21st century we can figure out how to process landfill contents into usable material.

[Mari333]

12. there are bags that can be used that arent plastic

they are made of cornstarch

http://greenearthofficesupply.stores.yahoo.net/biodcorcut2.html

when I was a kid they wrapped fish and meat in paper.

[Retrograde]

24. my butchers and fishmongers still do that

The checkers at one store, though, have to be forcibly restrained from putting plastic bottles of shampoo or soap into their own separate plastic bags. I: prefer another local store where they only use paper.

After reading about how Europeans always brought their own bags to their markets, I was surprised when in Italy recently to see all the stall owners put stuff in plastic bags (with their logos) even though I had my cloth bag out and open. My Italian isn't good enough to say, "No, really, the onions and apples will be ok together": at least I found a place to recycle the bags. (My own town in California will take plastic bags, but I have to bring them to the recycle center rather than put them out with the normal recyclables.)

[bertman]

19. stick a couple of old newspapers in your bag and wrap your fish and meat in them.

That's the way our fishmonger does it and it works just fine.

[RufusTFirefly]

7. I bet they could make the trains run on time, too

Although I applaud and fully support the banning of petroleum-produced plastic bags, let's not forget that the Chinese government is an authoritarian regime. They can institute laws and policies very quickly. Or else.

[ensho]

9. us americans should be saying "or else" to each other

nt

[RufusTFirefly]

10. Yes. Absolutely. That's how democracy should work.

We should collectively conclude that for the benefit of society and the planet in general that we need to ban petroleum-based plastic bags. More importantly, we need to prevent large corporations who have a selfish profit-driven interest in perpetuating this problem from using propaganda to unduly interfere with the democratic discourse.

[imdjh]

22. Who makes the cloth grocery bags? In what country are they made?

[RufusTFirefly]

23. Mine was made in the U.S.A. San Rafael, Calif., to be exact.

100 percent organic cotton. I'm not sure what your question was getting at.

[imdjh]

26. I wasn't necessarily getting at anything. I was simply looking for an angle. nt

[RC]

11. I like those plastic bags

I reuse plastic bags I get for everything from carrying my lunch to work to waste basket liners. I use them to put my folded shirts in when I travel to keep them reasonably neat in my baggage when the bag is not full enough to keep everything in place. To put an extra pair of shoes in to keep the rest of my clothes clean. I put my dirty clothes in them when traveling. They are great for just putting things in for easier carrying. And they take up practically no space when empty. The same can't be said for the so called reusable bags.
I find reusable cloth bags unsanitary - like woman's purses. From the floor (even bathroom floors) to the kitchen/dinning room table or kitchen counter... No wonder these people seem to have the sniffles all the time.
People's kids use the reusable bags for playing, cats like them. Kids carry their pets and toys around in them, then mama dumps the contents out and takes the bags with her for grocery shopping and sets them on the checkout counter where my food will be setting next. Reusable bags never seem to get washed, assuming they even can be.

No, lets keep the plastic bags. There are too many reusable uses where plastic bags have an advantage over 'reusable'.

[Maat]

13. Perhaps you forgot the part about it ending up in the ocean, etc.,

after people stop using the bag in question. If it ends up in a landfill, it takes DECADES to degrade, unless they put a highly-polluting substance on it to break it down.

Let's not keep the plastic bags.


Let's get biodegradable bags, that look like plastic bags, and use them minimally in our reusable cloth bags.

Then, we help everyone, and are considering the planet's inhabitants' needs instead of just our own.

[RC]

14. Living in North Dakota, the likelihood of the bags ending up in the ocean

are slight. We tried biodegradable bags a few years back. They biodegraded on the way home from the store. More than once I had to pick up my groceries off the ground when the environmentally friendly bag came apart carrying the groceries in. They weren't much good for anything else either. They weren't even reliable for waste basket liners, especially if they had been around for a while.
Newspapers and magazines in the landfill lasts centuries, but apparently that is ok.

Maybe what needs to be done is to make the grocery bags thicker, as trash and leaf bags are. They don't seem to be a problem.

[Maat]

15. Hmmmm .... my understanding is that paper bags degrade fairly quickly (months).

I have dealt with biodegrable bags for years - they are of good quality. Try buying from Ecoproducts.

I'm done using plastic bags.

[Retrograde]

25. North Dakota is a drop in the bucket

The entire population of North Dakota can use nothing but plastics and bury them in their state and it's not going to have a big effect. However, most of the population of the US lives close to the coasts, or near bodies of water that empty into the oceans, and more importantly, dumps their garbage near oceans, lakes or streams (yeah, my town included: our dump is near San Francisco Bay, and while it's supposedly far enough away from the tide line a big storm combined with a high tide can encroach on it.)

[bertman]

20. You can expect a visit from the Tong any day now, Intransigent One.

[HamdenRice]

21. I don't know what I'm going to pick up my dog's poop with if they ban them! nt

[imdjh]

27. Surgical gloves pinched from the doctor's office?

[eleny]

16. Barnes & Noble has a new fabric tote bag at the store

They had just put them out and I bought one since I didn't have one of my own cloth bags with me that day.

[ContinentalOp]

17. NO WAY!

It's all about freedom of choice. Maybe reusable bags work in whatever fancy state you're from but where I live we NEED those plastic bags. I simply cannot fill my SUV up with reusable or paper bags full of groceries. It just won't work.

[chill_wind]

18. My local no-frills grocery store charges for plastic bags

(which are actually pretty strong and can at least be repeatedly reused on return trips- I used to keep them in my car), but they also sell decent sized canvas bags with outside pockets for 99 cents, and I've been switching over. I keep a couple plastic inside for liners for things like milk and ice cream.

I still manage to accumulate plenty of the flimsy ones, and they too all get re-purposed as trash liners, kitty litter-scooping disposal etc etc. I stash them compactly in an empty coffee can "dispenser" under the kitchen sink with a hole slashed in the plastic lid to pull em out one at a time.

I've seen some intriguing tote bag patterns for crocheting plastic bags cut up into strips that appear to be incredibly strong and durable. (I'm hopeless with a crochet hook).I think I could knit one though, and I'd love to try that.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Recycle-Plastic-Shopping-Bags-into-Yarn/

edit to add: the plastic knit/crochet ones would be very easy to dunk in soapy water and be kept clean after each use.

[TheFarseer]

28. grocery store in my parents town of po-dunk, NE

used to give you a 5 cent credit for every bag you brought in to re-use. Not sure if they still do that. That was back when people used paper sacks.