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?

[chameleon54]

One quite large chain of country grocery stores ( Foodland branded ) , place all of their suitable sized cardboard boxes into a large storage area near the checkouts. They dont supply any bags at all. The customer selects the boxes they need to hold their groceries and place them on the packing end of the scanners where the shop assistants have become expert at packing them. 

This chain is independantly owned and has stores in at least 8 central  country towns that I know of.

The system works very well and you can either return the clean, empty boxes to the supermarket for re-use, use them again yourself for your own groceries or do as I do, break them up for mulching newly planted trees and the garden. They are great for stopping the weeds getting through, but still allow moisture into the ground.

When the stores have been refurbished the communities where offered the option of moving to bags, but overwhelmingly requested that the store continue with the re-use of cardboard boxes.

It all works extremly well.

[springyzone]

I read somewhere that the new plastic bags supermarkets use disintegrate within months and I have found that to be true, they go very brittle and flake in your hands.

But I'm a bit over hearing about the war on waste. Not that I don't think it is commendable to cut down on waste, don't get me wrong.

But it seems as if the emphasis is all on the consumer.

If any govt really wanted to cut down on waste they would ban the ads for bottled water. Apparently buying bottled water when there is a safe tap supply is one of the worst things you can do in terms of pollution.

Next up, we would look at packaging. I'm old enough to remember as a child, there was a small corner shop that had big tins of bisuits and you could buy a few at a time. They were put in a small paper bag and home you went with them. If you took the broken ones you got a discount.

That sort of thing could not happen today, there are a lot of regulations about food handling.

There are no facilities for people to buy loose supplies eg flour.

I was once behind a woman at the supermarket checkout. She made a big production of opening every packet there, removing things to her own containers, then telling the young girl she could have the paper, packets etc

I was really annoyed as it took up a lot of time, plus how did it help? The packets had to be disposed of, whether in her house or at the supermarket.

It's companies that need to look at how things are packaged. We're now seeing small portions of vegies packaged. Is that necessary?

And one of the biggest problems of all. Nothing is made to last now or be fixed-toasters, fridges, you name it. Once they are a few years old, you might as well buy new. The days of recycle/repair are almost gone.

[davidc4430]

i think 'over packaging' is a big problem. how often is it i buy a simple product only to find multiple layers of packaging must be removed before i reach the product.

i hate the sealed in packages where you can actually injure yourself trying to open it.

anyone with children will of course see just how much packaging goes into toys, when i was young just about every toy was in a simple box. now its a box, then a inner box with wire ties, tape, plastic bits, cardboard bits ect ect.

look at easter eggs, bloomin heck, and when you finally get the egg out of the box you realise the box was 90% empty!

then theres the everyday carp we see in the streets, 90% of that is 'fast food' wrappings. why is there no tax on fast food chains to pay for the clean-up?

a few years ago my local town got its first McLitter outlet after many objections, with worrys of waste being a listed reason we didnt want them here. got promises that wouldnt be a problem. well within a month of opening there was the distinctive wrappers ect strewn over not only the town but right down to the beach and on the beach. thanks guys.

here in south australia we do have the deposit on drink bottles, and hey, suprise suprise, drink bottles are rarely seen on the street. me thinks it works.

[bright.ton42]

Just wondering if supermarkets made it compulsory to bring your own bags........with perhaps an allowance of one plastic per person , for those who want something ad hoc ........how wd that work?  Wd that be doable?    

[davidc4430]

free plastic bags were banned in south oz a few years ago, so now we must buy bags...20cents each for plastic or $1 for the cloth type bags.

i rekon the bag makers laughed all the way to the bank.

we were told the ban would get rid of plastic bags as litter.....well no it didnt, it just removed 'some' bags from litter.

[ecar3483]

🙂

[twyngwyn]

yes, S.A. has deposits on bottles & cans and if you don't abide, this can happen:

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/law-order/two-kilburn-shopkeepers-fined-for-selling-bottles-and-c...

[davidc4430]

Can coffee shops ban disposable cups and stay in business?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-02/can-coffee-shops-ban-disposable-cups-and-stay-in-business/8580...

i dont buy coffee, i was just amazed at the problem the simple daily trend of buying a coffee has had on our enviroment.

[springyzone]

The truth is all those coffee cups and their plastic lids are probably doing more harm to the environment than the bags.

Even throw away items made with paper or cardboard are using up trees.

I know we have to be realistic and have some cardboard boxes and the like, but until recent years, all the paper cups and the like just didn't exist.

It would be interesting to see a campaign start to ban disposable coffee cups etc.

I find some shops use them as a matter of course (think Gloria Jean's, & I believe the problem is more widespread in USA). Even customers haing their coffee in the shop get a disposable cup.

[davidc4430]

Just putting on my 'see into the future foil hat'

hmmm, i see a 'disposable coffee cup levy' being anounced.