From Sunnyvale Sun readers; part of the Bay Area New Group Posted: 05/13/2009 03:07:16 PM PDT                                      Updated: 05/13/2009 03:18:34 PM PDT

I’d like to provide a different viewpoint in response to a number of spurious claims and red herrings offered up in last week’s letter on plastic bags by professor Lydia Ortega.

An estimated 1 million plastic bags end up in our bay each year. Plastic trash entangles, suffocates and poisons hundreds of animal species. Single-use bag production depletes resources and generates carbon emissions. We consume approximately 14 million trees and 12 million barrels of oil to produce the billions of plastic and paper bags that Americans throw away every year. Plastic bags clog storm drains and recycling equipment, costing cities millions. Yet somehow Ortega claims that there is no “economic or environmental justification for a ban or a tax on plastic bags.” She states that stores took “the initiative of offering” reusable bags. Actually, by state law, grocery stores are required to offer reusable bags for sale. And while there is, of course, no “conspiracy” of plastic bag manufacturers to compel use of plastic bags, there certainly is a concerted effort by the plastic bag industry to fight a tax, fee or ban. In fact, that industry was behind the state law that prohibits a local fee on plastic bags, hence the effort to ban them entirely.

Ortega’s contention that since our council members were not unanimously elected, they should not make policy that is not supported by all their constituents is anti-democratic. Making public policy to “promote the general welfare” is what our elected representatives are supposed to do. Minimizing the use of single-use plastic grocery bags through a ban, tax or fee would reduce air pollution, the use of finite resources and energy, carbon emissions, waste, and litter. It would also protect wildlife, clean up our water and save taxpayer dollars—exactly the kind of policy that would benefit us all.

 

While it is fashionable to bash government, in a democracy we are also free to work with our government to achieve common goals. Let’s support government leaders in cleaning up our environment for our kids. It’s time for we the people, through our elected representatives, to put a fee or tax on wasteful, single-use grocery bags or ban them entirely.

Barbara Fukumoto

Lewiston Drive

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_12361785

The Impact of Plastic Bags - from \’Message in the Waves\’

This is the trailer from Rebecca Hosking’s excellent ‘Message In The Waves’ documentary that she filmed for the BBC.

Because of their experience in turning Coles Bay plastic bag free, Jon Dee and Ben Kearney were the key advisors to Rebecca when she turned the UK town of Modbury plastic bag free.

You can check out Rebecca’s ‘Message In The Waves’ website at http://www.messageinthewaves.com/

This video appears here courtesy of BBC Natural World - Message in the Waves.

Posted Mon May 4, 2009 7:29am AEST
Updated Mon May 4, 2009 1:42pm AEST

South Australia has become the first state to ban lightweight plastic checkout bags.

The ban is expected to reduce the 400 million bags a year which end up in dumps.

Shops must supply reusable or environmentally friendly alternatives such as cornstarch or paper bags.

Retailers could get an on the spot fine of $315, or a maximum penalty of $5,000 if they are caught breaching the ban.

Woolworths spokesman Andrew Hall says the bag ban will be a big challenge to customers and staff.

“For those customers who forget their bags and they need to buy extra bags and the extra time taken to pack those green bags, so again we are urging customers to have some patience and work with us as the ban comes into place,” he said.

The Australian Retailers Association says the ban on plastic bags will increase the risk of contamination and could pass infection onto employees.

The Association’s executive director, Richard Evans, says reusable bags will be exposed to different foods and could lead to health issues.

“Meats and chicken et cetera and fish into one bag and that following week it could be in fact be used with vegetables or fresh fruit or whatever it might be,” he said.

“We leave these things in cars, there’s hygiene issues associated with that, so our concern is that there is an opportunity of health issues coming in because of the recalcitrance of the South Australian Government.”

The Environment Minister, Jay Weatherill, says the public has responded positively to the ban on plastic bags.

“The changed behaviour is already occurring at the retail outlets, we’re seeing people bringing their reusable bags, we’re seeing people bringing other bags from home, all sorts of changed behaviour,” he said.

“We’re seeing retailers get on board, we’ve already seen a number of retailers ban the bag ahead of our ban.”

Mr Weatherill says the Government will push for a nationwide cutback on packaging.

“Anyone that buys anything from a shop will realise they have to plough their way through layers and layers of packaging just to get to the item they want and I think most people regard that as wasteful and I think that’s what we should be moving on next,” he said.

ABC News

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/04/2559631.htm?section=australia

20 April 2009 | Source: just-food.com

 

 US supermarket group Kroger has launched an online contest for consumers to design a reusable carrier bag in a bid to encourage shoppers to reduce the number of plastic bags used.

This is the second year that Kroger has marked Earth Day with a reusable bag design contest. Consumers are invited to design a bag until 15 May on the company’s website. Each person who designs a bag will receive a coupon for a free multiple use bag - worth US$0.99.

The winner of the contest will receive a $1,000 Kroger gift card and their bag design will be mass produced. Five runners up will receive $100 gift cards.

“Helping to sustain the environment and serve our communities is part of Kroger’s core values. We partner with our customers and associates to offer choices that can make a real difference in the lives of our customers and their families every day,” said group vice president of corporate affairs Lynn Marmer.

Last year, Kroger sold 6m reusable bags, proof, the company said, that its customers are responding “enthusiastically” to efforts to increase reusable bag use.

The company claimed that it has also made solid progress on a number of other environmental initiatives. Over the past year, Kroger recycled more that 16m pounds of plastic and almost 1bn pounds of paper and cardboard. Since 2000, Kroger said that its associates have saved enough energy to “power envery single family home in Seattle for an entire year,” the company added.

Posted By CONOR MIHELL, SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Sault St. Marie, ON

April 2009

According to the Worldwatch Institute, an international environmental research organization, humans around the globe produce upwards of five trillion plastic shopping, storage, lunch and garbage bags annually. The majority of these bags are used once and eventually disposed in a landfill, where it takes nearly 1,000 years for them to decompose.

It took a trip to the other side of the world to make Wawa resident Megan Romano appreciate just how excessive our obsession with plastic bags has become. Romano was visiting her parents in Metung, Australia, and was impressed by the community’s bylaw forbidding the use of plastic bags.

“You were expected to use a canvas bag,” said Romano. “That was just the way it was, and stores and shoppers accepted it. It made me realize there’s no reason why we have to be plastic bag hogs.”

Romano and the Wawa Healthy Earth Committee (HEC) launched a campaign in November 2007 to make the community more aware of the excessive use of plastic bags. Romano said the effort to get consumers thinking about reducing their use of plastic bags had much to do with eliminating the eyesore of “garbage bag trees” emanating from the Michipicoten Municipal Landfill just south of town.

“We were hoping to get consumers thinking of how many plastic bags they actually need,” she said. “Most people are just carrying food from the grocery store to their car. We wanted to get shoppers to ask themselves, do I really need that many plastic bags?”

Another key component of the campaign was to “train the customer service staff to ask if shoppers were okay without a plastic bag instead of just handing them out without thinking about it,” Romano said.

Almost all Wawa retailers reacted positively to the campaign, Romano said. A year and a half later, many Wawa retailers have C-initiated weekly and monthly prize raffles for shoppers who choose reusable cloth bags over disposable plastic.

S imilar efforts to eliminate plastic bags from the retail experience have been launched around the world. In 2007, the town of Leaf Rapids, Man., became the first North American community to legislate a ban on all single-use plastic shopping bags.

About the same time, San Francisco outlawed the use of plastic grocery bags.

And starting in June, Toronto is enforcing a mandatory five-cent fee for plastic shopping bags.

In January, Canadian grocery giant Loblaw Companies began charging shoppers five cents per plastic bag in its Toronto stores –a program that will include all of its flagship Loblaws stores across the country starting Earth Day, April 22.

In an interview with the CBC, Loblaw executive chairman Galen Weston Jr. said results from five pilot projects suggest that charging a fee for plastic bags reduced usage by nearly 55 per cent.

Weston told CBC the proceeds from the sale of plastic bags would go towards covering the cost of the grocer’s plastic bag reduction program, sustainability projects and environmental charities.

He said consumers might also benefit from the initiative through lowered food prices.

Still, as Romano experienced in Australia, Canada and the U.S. are far behind the environmental scruples of other nations. Plastic bags have been blamed for everything from defacing the landscape to clogging storm drains and causing devastating floods–and have thus become subject to stiff legislation in many European, Asian and African countries.

Ireland began charging a 32-cent levy on plastic bags in 2002, resulting in a 90 percent decrease in usage and the equivalent to $18 million in funding for recycling projects. And China banned free handouts altogether in time for last summer’s Beijing Olympics.

Romano said HEC considered lobbying for a municipal ban on plastic shopping bags in Wawa, but decided against it because of the “excessive amount of red tape of setting up another law.”

Part of the challenge facing North American communities in attempting to establish antiplastic bag legislation is opposition from the powerful plastics lobby.

The manufacture and sale of plastic bags are estimated to contribute $500 million to the North American economy annually.

Furthermore, the Canadian Plastics Industry Association argues that conventional plastic shopping bags are completely recyclable.

Worldwatch Institute statistics, however, suggest that only 0.6 percent of plastic bags are actually recycled.

Plastic bags have been a ubiquitous part of Western culture since the 1950s, when the first sandwich “baggies” were made. Plastic garbage bags became common in the late 1960s, and supermarkets began replacing paper with plastic shopping bags in the 1970s.

Jan 11, 2009 04:30 AM

Robyn Doolittle
STAFF REPORTER

It’s like there’s a scarlet letter burned across Jennifer Sutcliffe’s forehead as she hastily piles eight bags of groceries into the cart – “P.” For plastic. For polluter.

“I have cats. I use them for the litter,” she clarifies apologetically.

Not good enough. Gazing down the line of nine open cashiers, Sutcliffe is the only one who didn’t BYOB. The 40-year-old retreats from the Loblaws store, which as of tomorrow will begin a plastic fee of 5 cents per bag.

A source said proceeds will go to the World Wildlife Fund.

Embarrassment aside, Sutcliffe says it’s a good idea. Although not everyone agrees.

Imelda, who does not want her last name used, is annoyed by the added cost.

“It’s not convenient. What, am I going to carry around my own boxes in the car all the time? Sometimes you’re just driving by the grocery store and pop in,” she said.

She had better get used to it. In December the city of Toronto passed a controversial decision to “tax” consumers a nickel a bag. This will take effect city-wide on June 1.

When Loblaws begins the fee, it will join No Frills and Food Basics, which already had already charged for plastic bags for years.

Sep 14, 2008 04:30 AM

Levies, deposit-return also being looked at as study targets worst trash offenders

Moira Welsh
Environment Reporter

The City of Toronto is targeting some of its biggest garbage offenders – coffee cups, takeout food containers and plastic bags – in a study that could lead to sweeping changes in the way residents handle their refuse.

As part of Toronto’s plan to be diverting 70 per cent of its garbage from landfill by 2010, the city is examining ways to limit items that have a bad reputation for filling up landfills.

“They may not be very heavy, but they take up a lot of space,” said Geoff Rathbone, general manager of Toronto’s solid waste department.

Proposals being considered for beverage cups, takeout food containers and plastic bags include:

An outright ban.

A levy or tax on the items. (Charging extra would presumably influence consumers to use recyclable cups or containers.)

A deposit-return program similar to the provincial bottle return program, whereby consumers get at least a portion of their money back if they turn in the container, making the seller responsible for recycling it.

A proposal pushed by Councillor Howard Moscoe targets cardboard and plastic store packaging, most of which ends up in the garbage stream. Stores in Toronto should be required to provide space where customers can take their purchases out of the packaging and leave the garbage behind, Moscoe says. This would put pressure on the manufacturers – over whom Toronto has no control – to reduce the amount of packaging on their products.

The aim of all this is to increase the garbage diversion rate from the current 42 per cent – a move that would extend the life of the city’s Green Lane landfill, near London, Ont. Some regions, like Durham and York, are moving toward incineration as a solution to waste that can’t be recycled, but Toronto remains committed to landfills.

Toronto’s waste managers met with counterparts from cities across North America last week at a local conference where they brainstormed on ways to take recycling programs to the next level.

Last week, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario spoke out against excessive product packaging, saying it costs municipal taxpayers more than $150 million a year in disposal costs.

Toronto’s study does not have the support of the Retail Council of Canada. A spokesperson for the council, Derek Nighbor, said Toronto’s proposals would unfairly burden retailers and lead to a patchwork system of rules in various municipalities.

Nighbor said several major retail associations have already signed a memorandum of understanding with the provincial government to divert 50 per cent of their plastic bags by 2010, and the Canadian council of environment ministers is working on broader solutions involving product packaging.

The 70 per cent diversion target that drives the city’s study, he said, “speaks to the importance of setting realistic targets as well.”

Tue May 27, 2008 3:06am EDT

(Reuters) — China will become the latest country to outlaw ultra-thin plastic bags, when a ban takes effect on Sunday, in a bid to cut pollution and save resources.

The ban, announced by the State Council in January, halts the production of bags that are thinner than 0.025 mm and forbids their use in supermarkets and shops.

It also requires retailers to charge customers for thicker plastic bags not covered by the ban.

Environmentalists say plastic bags can take up to 1,000 years to disintegrate and pose threats to marine life, birds and other animals.

Here is a list of some of the countries that already restrict plastic shopping bags or plan to do so.

* AFRICA — Rwanda and Eritrea banned the bags outright, as has Somaliland, an autonomous region of Somalia. South Africa, Uganda and Kenya have minimum thickness rules, and Ethiopia, Ghana, Lesotho and Tanzania are considering similar measures.

* AUSTRALIA — Coles Bay in Tasmania became “Australia’s First Plastic Bag-Free Town” in April 2003. Dozens of others followed suit. In January 2008, the environment minister called for supermarkets to phase out use of the bags nationwide by the end of the year.

* BANGLADESH — The first large country to ban bags in 2002. Bangladesh blamed millions of discarded bags for blocking drains and contributing to floods that submerged much of the country in 1988.

* BHUTAN — The isolated Himalayan country banned plastic shopping bags, street advertising and tobacco in 2007, as part of its policy to foster “Gross National Happiness”.

* CHINA — The ban on ultra-thin bags that goes into force on June 1 will cut pollution and save valuable oil resources, the State Council, or cabinet, says. In May 2007 Hong Kong proposed a 50 cent “polluter pays” levy on plastic shopping bags.

* ENGLAND — In May 2007 the village of Modbury in south Devon became Europe’s first plastic bag-free town, selling reuseable and biodegradable bags instead. London’s 33 councils plan to ban ultra-thin bags from 2009 and tax others.

* FRANCE — In 2005, French lawmakers voted to ban non-biodegradable plastic bags by 2010. The French island of Corsica became the first to ban plastic bags in large stores in 1999.

* INDIA — The western state of Maharashtra banned the manufacture, sale and use of plastic bags in August 2005, after claims that they choked drains during monsoon rains. Other states banned ultra-thin bags to cut pollution and deaths of cattle, sacred to Hindus, which eat them.

* IRELAND — A plastic bag tax was passed in 2002. The tax created an initial 90 percent drop in bag use, according to the Environment Ministry, though usage gradually rebounded.

* ITALY — Outright ban to be introduced from 2010.

* TAIWAN — A partial ban in 2003 phased out free bags in department stores and supermarkets and disposable plastic plates, cups and cutlery from fast food outlets. Most stores charge people who don’t bring their own T$1 ($0.03).

* UNITED STATES — San Francisco became the first and only U.S. city to outlaw plastic grocery bags in April 2008. The ban is limited to large supermarkets.

The state of New Jersey is mulling phasing them out by 2010.

In January 2008 New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a bill forcing large retailers to set up plastic bag recycling programmes and to make recycled bags available.

Sources: Reuters (Writing by Gillian Murdoch, Beijing Editorial Reference Unit, Editing by Alan Wheatley and Valerie Lee)
 

 

 

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved