The Great Plastic Carrier Bag Con

It was all a con, those film clips of plastic bags washed up onto those exotic locations with their dazzling white sand and palm trees, coconuts and all that.

Think about it-- how can they end up in the sea when the rubbish they went with into our wheelie bins gets incinerated, buried, recycled or what----dropped off the end of the pier ready to begin its sponsored float to Hawaii- get real it is all tosh.

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Over here you had to pay 15 cents for a plastic bag in the shops, now they have increased it to 30 cents, another con job and a nice little earner as they say, don't fall for it over there.

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Besides people dropping them, plastic bags catch the wind like sails and are whisked out of bins, landfill sites and council tips.
Marine Conservation, say that UK beaches see an increase of two thousand bags every three years.
Not much, except that whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, turtles and sea birds are among records of dead animals having injested bags that get tangled in their stomach or blocks their gut.
It takes 100's of years for a bag to break down.
The plastic also contain toxins, which could persist for many years, because the bag breaks down to
microscopic particles.
Bring back paper carrier bags, I'd be happy to pay for them. I often refuse a bag and I often take my hessian shopping bag with me.
We are not the only country in the world with plastic bags. I believe we ship a lot of plastic waste abroad!

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Sadly it is not a con. The amount of plastic in the ocean needs to be seen to be believed, There is nowhere you can dive without seeing plastic bags. The amount of marine life killed by eating plastic is amazing and the number killed or maimed by becoming entangled in plastic nets is equally staggering.

The North Pacific gyre is home to the the largest concentration of rubbish on the planet covering hundreds of square kilometres and mainly plastic with over 200000 pieces per sq Km. Apparently the Atlantic has a similar garbage problem

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Thanks for this reply Bruce. I knew of the Pacific "garbage patch" but didn't know about the Atlantic.

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I am in Canberra for the long weekend visiting my daughter. This afternoon I went to the supermarket to buy some odds and ends and wondered about the checkout chick just piling my stuff up on the counter. Then she asked if I wanted to BUY a plastic bag (15c) because they didn't supply them any more, apparently the free plastic bags are banned in the ACT but they don't supply paper bags instead.

As it happened I always carry a bag with me so I gave it to her to put my purchases in but if they ban the plastic bags you would have thought the supermarkets would provide something for the girls to put the goods in.

I shall be writing to them when I get home, bastards!

BTW the ACT is a long way from the ocean.

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I always take my own bags. I hate the way they find their way into every part of the environment.

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Following Janelas comment that other countries are exporting recycled materials, I was surprised to discover that a great deal of our recycled bottles, plastic & paper/cardboard is sent in containers to China at a cost of £500 a consignment. The stuff is then sorted by poorly paid workers.
After processing much of it is exported back to us.

British firms apparently couldnt beat them on price & many simply folded.
Another example of CHinese Takeaways.

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I also take my own bags to the supermarket, their plastic bags are so flimsy they are no good for carrying a lot of shopping.

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When I were a lad, my mother used to carry a shopping bag (or 2) - no plastic bags then. We've just become too used to having our shopping popped into a disposable plastic bag for our convenience.

Unless we forget them, we take a selection of durable bags (hessian, cotton etc..) with us and use them. I don't mind paying 50p. for a bag that will last a year and I'm in favour of phasing out plastic ones.

Here, it's not plastic bags washed up on the beach - it's blue plastic gloves and pieces of fishing net washed overboard or discarded from fishing boats.