War on waste

[davidc4430]

War on waste: NT environmental groups claim plastic bag ban has failed

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-24/war-on-waste-nt-plastic-bag-ban-fails-say-environment-groups/8...

Well of course its failing.

shopping bags make a very small percentage of plastic waste.

in south oz we i guess banned them at about the same time as the NT.

maybe i dont see as many shopping bags as i did before, hard to say. what i do know is before the ban i reused shopping bags as bin liners, now i buy bin liners! if i need to bag up old clothes to take to charity bins, id use old shopping bags. now i use bought bin liners.

plus i now have a pile of reusable bags that need replacing every few months (i'm fussy about cleanliness of the bags i carry food in)

when i go for my walks with Foo do i see lovely clean country rubbish free? no i dont, i see lots of rubbish (quite a lot of fast food containers)

maybe a ban on McGarbage wrappers?

[bushies.girl]

No one seems to know where the "supposedly" recycled plastic bags end up   ..... seems like quite a few end up at the tip 😞

I wash my Aldi grocery bags once at fortnight, so dont need to replace them very often   .....  

[*kazumi*]

i have whole collection of "green bags", but I have to admit I do like the nasties; I use them as bin liners.  If you just put your rubbish in the bin, it flies all over the place is it is being tipped into the truck. 

I guess we should go back to the string bags or tough paper bags that we used before the plastic ones, and once bit worn they could be recycled or used to as bin liners, and they would just rot away and not cause the environmental disaster the plastic bags are causing.

The plastic is causing terrible damage to the oceans, and we are now eating the chemicals leached into fish. 

[cezm]

I love the nasties too but for the last few months I've been picking up boxes from behind stores and using them for either rubbish or recyclables - close the lid and put the whole thing in the bin. I'm clearing out too, so I take a box or two to the charity shop every fortnight.

[this-one-time-at-bandcamp]

Does Australia have the bottle deposit on cans and bottles?  Oregon instituted the first in America in the early 70's and for a time the highways were clean.........then the fast food wrappers took over.  Perhaps it's time to institute a deposit on Big Mac wrappers.

[go-tazz]

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cezm wrote:

I love the nasties too but for the last few months I've been picking up boxes from behind stores and using them for either rubbish or recyclables - close the lid and put the whole thing in the bin.

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That's not a good idea for recyclable as when it arrives at a recycle place they will not open any boxes or

plastic bags as they don't know what's in them,(they considert them hazard's as they could contain trash

or sharps). 

They have to physically see the items to process them so never put anything in closed containers.

Any items that they consider hazards are put in the trash bins.

[kopenhagen5]

5 million tons of trash removed from beach in India.

http://www.smh.com.au/video/video-news/video-world-news/five-million-tons-of-beach-trash-20160815-4j...

[lind9650]

It's not only plastic bags ------ lastic bottles, plastic plates and cutlery from parties and take-away. Styrofoam cups and containers and plastic wrapping on just about every small item.

Years ago we all had the daily newspaper to wrap our garbage in before putting it into the bins. Now most of us get the news on TV and the internet, and more and more plastic is being produced.  We used to go to the Butcher and get our meat wrapped in nice butcher paper that the kids later used to draw on. Now all theeat comes on those horrible trays, wrapped in plastic.

I have several cooler bags and green bags. They can easily be cleaned, and I refuse to buy anything in plastic bottles or jars, only sometimes there is no choice.

People get fined for littering, but still the roadsides are full of rubbish.

Erica

[bushies.girl]

Lind most plastic bottles can be recycled, all ours go into our recycle bin   ..... Plastic wrapping and Styrofoam are a prob, ours goes up the chimney,  not a perfect solution but better than them lying in landfill for decades imo ( others will disagree ). We dont put much in the rubbish bin,  would be lucky to fill 1/2 a bin  per week

[icyfroth]

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@*kazumi* wrote:

i have whole collection of "green bags", but I have to admit I do like the nasties; I use them as bin liners.  If you just put your rubbish in the bin, it flies all over the place is it is being tipped into the truck. 

I guess we should go back to the string bags or tough paper bags that we used before the plastic ones, and once bit worn they could be recycled or used to as bin liners, and they would just rot away and not cause the environmental disaster the plastic bags are causing.

The plastic is causing terrible damage to the oceans, and we are now eating the chemicals leached into fish. 

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I would like to see a return of those paper shopping sacks we used to use back in the day too. But then, would we be felling even more forests of trees to make them?

Maybe recycled paper could be used? Kill two birds with one stone? Use up the tonnes of waste paper to make the shopping bags?

At leaste they'd degrade in landfill. 

But would the chemicals in the paper and ink from the printing leach into the environment?

One solution seems to bring new problems.