Green taxes -Plastic bags to be banned ??

magyar

Gingham_Ribbon wrote: »

Making people spend more and more money, on carriers, on parking, on refuse collection, on road tax...if's just not the answer. It is continuing to make the poor struggle even more and doing little for the environment. (It's increasing profits for business and generating money for the government though.)

It would work if there is an acceptable alternative to make it avoidable. We have two nearby supermarkets, both of which have free parking. We have a town centre nearby, which doesn't.

The supermarket is clever enough to realise that if you want people to go there, then you need to subsidise the parking and you encourage people to come. Our local town centre, though, charges people to park almost anywhere in the centre - as a result no-one shops there; all that's left are a few mobile phone shops, where there used to be a greengrocer, a baker and a butcher.

So, if not make supermarkets charge, then at least have the foresight to realise that charging people to park in towns just pushes them away.

Gingham_Ribbon

It's the same in parts of town here. New parking restrictions have meant that I can't get to some of my favourite shops and I know other people have stopped going there too. I'd hate to see them close but it would take me an hour or more to get there by bus and longer to walk.

The answer isn't to keep piling on the cost - as you say, there HAS to be suitable alternatives. It is MUCH cheaper for me to park in town than it is to take the bus. Apart from one car park where I got stung for £7 the other day for 2 and a quarter hours, but even then it's cheaper if there are 2 adults in the car. I used to always get the bus to town - now I never do because the fares have gone up by more than 300% in 5 years and the services have been drastically cut.

PabloNeruda

Why is this even being debated - is it not the most logical thing to do? Other countries such as Germany for example have been charging for plastic bags for the past 20 years or so. This has the effect that everyone uses reusable bags made of cotton, which are much stronger and much more environmentally friendly. The fact is that despite the efforts of some responsible retailers, the voluntary approach has failed, so it is vital that the authorities build on this proposal in waste strategy.

As peter999 is really excelling himself on this thread with his ignorance I though I'd throw a few statistics his way:

500 billion: Number of plastic bags consumed worldwide every year (1 million per minute)
500: Years it takes a plastic bag to decay in landfill
167: Bags used annually by the average British consumer
4.175 million: "Average" person's plastic-bag legacy, in years
£64 to £80 million: Amount British retailers spend yearly on providing plastic bags to customers

Now peter, if you can't see the logic in cutting this down, I despair. For a book entitled "Change the world for a fiver" activists asked 1 million people what their top suggestions were to make the world a better place. Eschewing plastic bags was one of the most frequent responses. Plastic bages are one of the worst indicators of indulgence and excess, the epitome of throw-away Western consumer living.


By the way, I don't think anybody has also touched upon the effect of plastic bags on marine life either. Dolphins etc frequently choke on them.

peter999

PabloNeruda wrote: »

500 billion: Number of plastic bags consumed worldwide every year (1 million per minute)
500: Years it takes a plastic bag to decay in landfill
167: Bags used annually by the average British consumer
4.175 million: "Average" person's plastic-bag legacy, in years
£64 to £80 million: Amount British retailers spend yearly on providing plastic bags to customers

Now peter, if you can't see the logic in cutting this down, I despair. For a book entitled "Change the world for a fiver" activists asked 1 million people what their top suggestions were to make the world a better place. Eschewing plastic bags was one of the most frequent responses. Plastic bages are one of the worst indicators of indulgence and excess, the epitome of throw-away Western consumer living.


By the way, I don't think anybody has also touched upon the effect of plastic bags on marine life either. Dolphins etc frequently choke on them.

Fantastic statistics.

Have you got statistics on all other waste in the World ??
-how many unnecessary cars are being manufactured
-how many power stations China opens each week
-why so much produce is being shipped backwards/forwards around the world
-why people don't shop locally & drive to out of town stores
(with their canvas shopping bags -Woo Hoo !!)

Then the easily misled stupid public quote:
"to make the world a better place
-Eschewing plastic bags was one of the most frequent responses"

& continue shopping & consuming !! :rotfl:

In the grand scheme of saving the World, does cutting back on plastic bags really matter ??

No it doesn't, that's the harsh reality !!

The public will have to suffer (banning cars & similiar) to really make a difference.

peter999

PabloNeruda

peter999 wrote: »

Fantastic statistics.

Have you got statistics on all other waste in the World ??
-how many unnecessary cars are being manufactured
-how many power stations China opens each week
-why so much produce is being shipped backwards/forwards around the world
-why people don't shop locally & drive to out of town stores
(with their canvas shopping bags -Woo Hoo !!)

Fantastic changing the subject. This thread isn't about cars. Or power stations. Or transport. Or 'saving the world', for that matter.It is about plastic bags, the wasteful and throwaway society they represent, the damage they do, and whether taxation will work. Which it will, as it has done in Germany and Ireland.

I am in complete agreement with you about the huge scale of pollution in other areas such as transport. But that has no relevance to whether or not we should be tackling this particular very serious pollution issue too.

You would also do well to lend your posts slightly more substance if you tried to stop talking about "saving the world". It makes you look a bit, errr, silly.

peter999

PabloNeruda wrote: »

You would also do well to lend your posts slightly more substance if you tried to stop talking about "saving the world". It makes you look a bit, errr, silly.

It's called Tokenism, manufactured to make the people they are doing something useful (important).

You summed it completely with your quote:

"activists asked 1 million people what their top suggestions were to make the world a better place. Eschewing plastic bags was one of the most frequent responses. Plastic bages are one of the worst indicators of indulgence and excess, the epitome of throw-away Western consumer living."

peter999

nelly_2

Has anyone mentioned theres more plastic wrapping on the food items themselves than any plastic carrier bag?

rosysparkle

peter999 wrote: »

-out of town stores should be banned to reduce food miles

I live in a small village that has a baker's shop but no greengrocer or butcher. But we do have a massive Tesco on the edge of the village. It's "out of town" for the people in the nearby town, but for us it's our local shop.

Gingham_Ribbon

nelly wrote: »

Has anyone mentioned theres more plastic wrapping on the food items themselves than any plastic carrier bag?

Nelly, that's exactly what my waffling was trying to get at. (Thank you!) The carrier bags are the least of the problem when this is happening. And the very neatly stacked boxes of toothpaste looked fine when they were in a basket on the shelf without boxes round them when I was younger!

scaldyflash

Jaysus I remember as a child being sent to buy a half pound of biscuits from the corner shop, weighed and served in a brown paper bag !) (Except on 'famine day' the day before my Daddy got paid, then we had to get a half pound of the broken biscuits !) All environmentally friendly but lovely all the same