Plastic bag dramas

The movement that emerged in 2018 to ban plastic bags and got some traction on reducing plastic bag usage, particularly supermarkets, is perhaps a milestone in history.

Supermarkets have stopped giving away the plastic bags, they sell them instead.

Paper bags seem to be the replacement...there goes a few more trees?

Supermarket bags are allegedly ‘one-use' and so have been targeted for that reason. Many households reuse these bags in many different ways. So hardly single-use right?

Meanwhile, the proponents of this cunning scheme have failed significantly in two ways:

Firstly, none seem to have bothered to look inside the supermarket bag, the contents usually contains many items that have multiple layers of plastic and all would have to be ‘single-use'. For example, milk bottles. There appears no issue with that continuing?

Secondly: The recycling industry is overwhelmed with bag recycling so is shutting-down deliveries for several months, attempting to catch up on the backlog? The evidence then suggests the supermarket dramas over plastic bag use would appear of minimal impact?

Although the results have the appearances of being somewhat superficial and misguided to date, dare I suggest? The winner looks to be supermarkets, which have benefited financially here. The results have turned out to be under-whelming indeed.

I Stevenson, Tauranga City.

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