Banning Plastic Bags: Which Towns have gone for this Option?

grownupgreen says…
grownupgreen has long campaigned against the indiscriminte use of plastic carrier bags; and the apparent reluctance of most major retailersquickly to stop offering them, free, to customers – in the absence of any real Government intervention. True, in the Government Waste Strategy the government has pledged to “look at” an end to free single use plastic carrier bags and is already working with a consortium of businesses to achieve only a 25% reduction in the environmental impact of free carrier bags by end of this year. This means things are not progressing quickly enough for many people, who are concerned about the impact of carrier bag use on the environment.

Stop Using Free Plastic Carrier Bags.
It takes a bit of time, and patience, to train yourself to take a re-usable shopper with you every time you go out. If you’ve got a lot of shopping (this happens often with supermarket shops), you’ll need lots of reusable bags, otherwise it’s so easy just to grab a handful of free plastic carriers as the goods roll through the checkout….
You’ll need to be brave, some times, when telling a shop assistant you don’t want your goods in a bag. See our famous Primark feature....

You can buy re-usable bags (and support grownupgreen) at the Gug shop which now has an extensive range of cloth & re-usable bags. See illustration, left. Buy one for your own use (or maybe as a present for someone else) and let us know whether it reduces your dependency on plastic freebies.
Shopping Trolleys are great to carry home heavy shopping – and could be coming into vogue (well, you probably have a suitcase on wheels these days: why not a shopper)? Maybe our suburban pensioner has some thoughts on shopping trolleys? You can find her archived diary entries here.
Many of you swear by rucksacks, because you can carry more without injury to your backs.

Acting as a Community – Modbury
Rebecca Hosking, a BBC camerawoman and something of a heroine, was inspired to get her home town of Modbury to go plastic bag free after first filming horrific plastic pollution in Hawaii and then going diving in Devon only to find the sea floor covered in plastic bags. Click here for the Modbury web site.

Beachwatch
The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) has a special interest in plastic bags, because of the harm they on beaches and to marine life: “more than 7,000 plastic bags were found on UK beaches during Beachwatch 2006 – that’s 40 bags for every kilometre of beach surveyed. Plastic bags ranked number 15 in the top 20 most common litter items recorded during Beachwatch 2006.
During the 2006 International Coastal Clean-up (ICC), which took place in over 60 countries worldwide almost three quarters of a million plastic bags were found, accounting for 9% of all litter found”.

The MCS also explains that plastic bags are items easily mistaken for food by marine animals, especially those that consume jellyfish or squid. A plastic bag floating in the water and a jellyfish are very difficult to tell apart. This makes plastic bags a particularly hazardous form of litter to wildlife. Plastic bags have been found in the stomachs of many marine animals including endangered species such as leatherback turtles, harbour porpoises and black footed albatross. Ingestion (swallowing) of plastic bags can result in blockages, internal infections, starvation and death. Estimates for plastic degradation at sea range from 450 to 1,000 years.

There have been successful prosecutions for dumping waste into the sea.In June 2004 MCS helped the Maritime and Coastguard Agency(MCA) successfully prosecute a shipping company for disposing of a plastic bin liner full of rubbish overboard. MCS provided written evidence on the effects of plastic bags in the environment using evidence from Beachwatch results. The shipping company were fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £5,258 costs to the MCA. However, as you might imagine, its not always easy to identify a possible culprit; and it can be time-consuming, and difficult, to get enough evidence to secure a conviction.

More Help and Information
Adopt a Beach and Beachwatch (organised by the MCS) have a helpful section on their website , for you to access if you are trying to get plastic bags ‘banned’ in your town.

The MCS suggests you can:

• Write to your local MP requesting the introduction of a plastic bag tax.
  find your local MP here
• If you see anyone dumping plastic bags or any other litter at sea report it to the MCA
• Try to reuse plastic bags instead of taking handfuls of free bags at checkout counters.
• Buy a durable bag made of a biodegradable material such as cotton or jute.
• Encourage your local stores to sell reusable shopping bags, and to only hand out plastic bags on request.
• By taking part in Adopt-a-Beach and Beachwatch surveys , you help gather information needed to support measures such as a plastic bag tax.

Towns that have Already Banned Plastic Bags
For a full list go to this webpage on the Adopt a Beach website. Thre’s a list of towns or communities in England, Wales, and Scotland, that have a ban in force – or that are planning to issue a ban.

Other Links
London… tax or ban.
£500 penalty for dumping cardboard.
Supermarket Carrier Bag Recycling Schemes.
Bag It, Don’t Bin it.
Adnams Beach Cleans.

Your Comments
Are you working to ban plastic bags? Maybe you’d like to argue that, sometimes, plastic carrier bags (free or not) can be a good thing? Please send us your comments (click on the button below).

Comments
“Various mutterings in Malvern may come to something soon” JH.

Suzanne Phillips - 16/01/08

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