Introduction

Waste is an important issue, but it’s also worthy.  Zero waste sounds good and what we should be doing, but makes no mention of resource use. There are the 3 Rs, re-use, recycle or refurbish which is what second hand shops, auctions, car boot sales, salvage yards, jumble sales and the freecycle network do. There are charity shops on every high street and some specialise in vintage or haute couture clothes or books, but buying second hand is still a minority pursuit in the UK, but not of course if something is antique.

Textile traders sell container loads of second hand clothes to West Africa which has almost killed the indigenous textile industry; one source of economic development where once value would have been added to raw materials produced locally.  But Eastern European traders are now paying higher prices and shipping fashionable clothes to Eastern Europe. 

Both these exports partly depend on imported clothes being so cheap, they are worn only a few times before being discarded. We tend to forget the fossil fuel consumed in their manufacture and in the thousands of miles they have been shipped, probably from China. Then in their re-export to Africa or Eastern Europe.

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Industrial scale waste

NISP, the national Industrial Symbiosis Programme aims to transform waste from one industry into the raw material for another.  One success story is the white incinerated bone ash from culled cattle; the incinerating company was send 1000 tonnes to landfill, but it is now being mixed with brick making materials for white bricks which are in high demand.

Happy cows lie on mats made from tyres; polymer containers mixed with a specific percentage of tyres and extruded become an ultra-violet light resistant material for street furniture and non slip decking for public spaces.  New tyres come with a charge for recycling the old ones, but there are mountains of tyres in the UK, some of which are slowly burning with no way of extinguishing them.

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Carrier bags are everywhere

Even more ubiquitous than abandoned tyres are the thin single use carrier bags which festoon trees and hedges around landfill sites, litter beaches, towns and cities. Worldwide we use about a trillion carrier bags each year which weigh approximately 50m tonnes and require 50m barrels of oil in their manufacture.  And the majority of the bags imported into the UK are from Malaysia, China and Thailand – thousands of more transport miles powered by fossil fuels.

Research by defra indicated that 80% of UK households re-used their carrier bags, but we often claim to do what we think is right and our good intentions remain just that.  It seems that 1 in 200 are used as bin liners or for wrapping waste, but as with the other 199 which go straight in the bin, they still go to landfill and take 1000 years to degrade.

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Plastic bags are dangerous – not just to babies

Some 100,000 turtles, dolphins, whales and seals ingest our plastic bags, including thin single use bags and die.  A rare Cuviers Beaked Whale was washed ashore on Mull, its gut completely blocked by compacted bags.  Cuviers usually eat squid and it is thought it mistook bags in the water for its prey.  In 1998 a leather back turtle was washed ashore in Galloway with 57kg of bags obstructing its alimentary tract and in April 2002 a dead Minke Whale in Normandy had 800kg of plastic bags in its stomach.

In Kenya thin carrier bags fill up with rain water  and provide ideal breeding grounds for malaria carrying mosquitoes.  Devastating monsoon floods in Bangladesh were caused by drains being blocked by carrier bags.

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“Ban the Bag”

Bangladesh was the first country to ban them despite the opposition of the local twenty six plastic bag manufacturers.  Other countries have banned them, or imposed a tax.  Ireland imposed a plastax of 9p per bag and it was claimed there was a 95% reduction in the 1.2bn thin carrier bag given out in 2001.  The Co-op and Tescos have introduced degradable carrier bags, but they require sunlight which is in short supply in landfill, so they are still there for the next 1000 years.

In Scotland B&Q introduced a 5p per bag charge and consumption fell by 82% with only 1.8% of customers said to be very unhappy.  In 2006 Ikea also started to charge 5p per bag and there has been a drop of 95% in bags handed out; in September 2006 the charge will rise to 10p and the bags will be biodegradable made from cornstarch.

Retailers are offering ‘bags for life’, strong plastic carrier bags which will be replaced when they wear out.  Waitrose introduced these in 1997 and estimates it has saved 50m single use bags per annum.

Disposable carrier bags weigh about 5.5 grams, so it takes 180,000 to make a tonne which fetches about £40.  Added to which they are often contaminated by their contents and ink, we find it difficult to sort the different polymers used in packaging, (they can’t be mixed), and the bags are too light to be sorted mechanically.  So recycling carrier bags is not economic without even counting the cost of transport and handling.

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Alternatives

What are the alternatives?  Surely you can’t go wrong with biodegradable bags made from cornstarch?  French research in 2004 found they were worse than conventional plastic bags on five counts:  non-renewable resources used in production; emission of green house gases; eutrophication; acid rain and production of solid waste.  In landfill the biodegrade bags are compacted and rot rather than degrade, releasing methane.

Paper bags perhaps?  No.  The French study found they were the worst performers on eight counts although they produced less litter.  Recycling a kilo of plastic uses 91% less energy than recycling a kilo of paper.  In landfill paper bags produce methane and carbon dioxide and takes almost as long as plastic bags to break down.

So out of the four, bags for life are the best, but cotton or hessian bags should be even better.  Camden Council in London is planning a major education drive and will deliver cotton bags to residents and hessian bags will be sold at cost price in a local market.

We have become so used to packing our purchases in free carrier bags that it is hard to think of the resources used in their manufacture and transport, yet alone what happens to them when we throw them away.  While a number of countries and states around the world have banned plastic carrier bags, the UK government which prides itself on its commitment to reducing carbon emissions, leaves it to market forces. 

Retailers with their names blazoned across each bag, are unwilling to grasp the nettle and stop giving out carrier bags or to try to educate customers.  If B&Q can do it …..
And the last word goes to the Swiss who take their own bags when they go shopping.

Additional Information

Freecycle groups www.freecycle.org to give away unwanted, but useful items and to receive items you need or want

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