In Defence of the Plastic Bag

nimbo

lindseykim13 wrote: »

Instead of picking on the carrier bags they should be improving them to make them degradable.

co op have...

little-d_3

I quite agree with your comments. I too use plastic bags for many other uses, e.g. bin liners. If I didn't re-use these bags I would be going out and purchasing bin liners so whats the difference. We should be making them of bio-degradable materials instead of banning them altogether

I recently purchased two ink cartridges for my printer. These came in a silver foil bag, within a box, within a rigid plastic and cardboard case, and they then wanted to put it in a plastic bag!!!! The packaging from this purchase nearly filled a plastic bag.

If we all used plastic bags wisely and didn't just discard them willy nilly - end of problem.

arealhighlander

The Co-Op have been supplying Bio Degradeable plastic bags for years. Why cant other supermarkets just use them?

They ARE recyclable as I, along with thousands of others, either reuse them for shopping for as bin liners!

I agree with the first OP, plastic bags HAS become the latest Green Bandwagon to be jumped on.

Horace

Why cant supermarkets do what Homebase does and provide large brown paper bags? It makes more sense to have a large paper bag than can be composted than a plastic one.

BTW, I shall be recycling my bags at a carboot next week - and any leftover will be used as bin bags.

mshappy

I work for primark about a month ago the store I work in,introduced brown paper bags.They really haven't gone down to well and many people still want to use plastic.We had a customer ring up and complain the other day because it was raining and her bag split at the bottom resulting in her shopping ending up on the wet pavement.She argued that are bags should be customer friendly not just eco friendly.

Ben84

Horace wrote: »

Why cant supermarkets do what Homebase does and provide large brown paper bags? It makes more sense to have a large paper bag than can be composted than a plastic one.

BTW, I shall be recycling my bags at a carboot next week - and any leftover will be used as bin bags.

Unfortunately, paper bags are worse for the environment it seems. Plastic has many problems, but it does consume less resources and energy. Paper making is a big energy consumer (the wood has to be ground up and boiled to make pulp), and the production of it contributes to deforestation in many places. Lots of rainforest has been chopped down to make room for growing paper crop trees.

Also, while so many bags of all types are sent to landfill, paper isn't much better than plastic. It still takes up space and doesn't degrade. Very little decaying happens in landfills, the waste is highly compacted and lacks oxygen. Apparently 50 year old newspapers can be dug up from landfills in amazingly good condition.

geordie_joe

Ben84 wrote: »

Unfortunately, paper bags are worse for the environment it seems. Plastic has many problems, but it does consume less resources and energy. Paper making is a big energy consumer (the wood has to be ground up and boiled to make pulp), and the production of it contributes to deforestation in many places. Lots of rainforest has been chopped down to make room for growing paper crop trees.

According to the Modbury site one of these paper bags weighs 50 times more than a flimsy supermarket carrier bag. So they use more fuel to ship them across the seas. Also many of them are coated with chemicals to make them rain proof. This chemical is not good for the environment.

geordie_joe

PrinceGaz wrote: »

It is worth noting that the number of people who "successfully" commit suicide from car exhaust fumes has fallen dramatically since catalytic converters became mandatory on all new cars.

Have you got any figures to back that up? If you have then, unless the figure fell to nil, they will also back up my statement that car fumes can kill you.

PrinceGaz wrote: »

so it is actually quite difficult to kill yourself in a car with a working catalytic converter, unless you drink or drug yourself unconcious first, in which case you may as well not bother going to the trouble of the hosepipe and exhaust as a few more pills would do the job anyway.

Many people do just that! Many people drink or take drugs just before the commit suicide. In fact, according to the Samaritans and many others you are more likely to commit suicide if you drink or take drugs. So saying people would use car exhaust fumes to kill them selves because they need to drink or take drugs first doesn't stand up. [/quote]These days, knowing that exhaust fumes won't work very well, they probably choose other methods instead.
[/quote] People who about to commit suicide are not really thinking straight, are they. Many people use methods that don't work very well. Any way, the point is it does work, not how well it works.

PrinceGaz wrote: »

That doesn't change the fact that cars are still bad for the environment, a lot worse than public-transport at any rate, and cars shouldn't be used if there is a viable public-transport alternative.

I agree, and people should also not use them when they don't really need to. Like going 200 yards to get a paper when they are fit enough to walk. We need cars, van, trucks etc. but we have to look at when we really need to use them and when we don't.

moonrakerz

geordie_joe wrote: »

Have you got any figures to back that up? If you have then, unless the figure fell to nil, they will also back up my statement that car fumes can kill you.

Give it a rest !

geordie_joe

Originally Posted by geordie joe
Have you got any figures to back that up? If you have then, unless the figure fell to nil, they will also back up my statement that car fumes can kill you.

moonrakerz wrote: »

Give it a rest !

Why, it was a legitimate request for information that would prove my point, and I took the trouble to ensure it could not be mistaken as me implying that the OP was wrong, or just making it up.

So far all you have come up with to disagree that car fumes kill you is

"Car exhaust gas specifically was responsible for 38% of that 10%.
This gives an annual number of fatalities from this cause of around 200. Hardly the Black Death"

I hardly think that is much of an argument!