Towns, cities and villages throughout the UK, including all 33 London boroughs, are considering the introduction of an outright ban on free plastic carrier bags. In fact many local authorities have already taken this bold step. But will a ban really make a significant positive contribution to the environment?
David Tyson, head of the Packaging and Films association thinks not. He thinks that the public are being misled by the environmental spin. In an interview with the Sun newspaper he has said that a ban could do more environmental harm than good. When a plastic bag tax was introduced in Ireland people started to use bin-bags as an alternative and stores began to wrap products in additional packaging to protect them leading to more plastic packaging being used.
The true figures are that plastic carrier bags represent less than one percent of annual landfill waste. The average person in the UK will use around 134 plastic bags a year representing only 2kg of the 11tonnes of carbon dioxide that they would be responsible for in a year.
Plastic bags are made from crude oil as a bi-product of fuel. Approximately 0.2% of an oil barrel will be used to make plastic carrier bags. An outright ban of plastic carrier bags would therefore make very little difference to oil consumption and the oil bi-products may need to be burned off if they are not turned into plastic bags.
Plastic bags are in everybody’s lives. We’ve all seen them blowing down windy streets, caught in trees and snagged by telephone lines. But they actually represent less than 1% of street litter. Is a ban of plastic carrier bags really going to make the difference that some environmentalists would like us to think?
Tags: plastic carrier bags
Those so-called environmentalists know little of how to protect the environment.