Plastic bag, or no plastic bag – that is the question.
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Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the supermarket, armed with your reusable plastic shopping bag, supermarket giant Aldi has reignited the contentious issue with the call to ban plastic shopping bags altogether.
The German retailer says it "supports a complete ban on single-use plastic bags".
At Aldi, shoppers pay 15c for a plastic bag – or like their fellow supermarket chain competitors, customers have the option of buying a fabric bag or cooler bag for a little more.
Tasmania banned the use of lightweight plastic bags in 2013. In their place, the major supermarkets rolled out what they call reusable plastic bags for 15 cents as a viable alternative.
There’s little doubt that this change has resulted in a net benefit to the environment – it was estimated that the previous plastic bags had a lifespan of about 1000 years when they end up in landfill. Sadly, even worse, many end up in our waterways and wreak havoc on sea and birdlife.
It was estimated that Australians use about four billion plastic bags a year – only 3 per cent end up in recycling.
However, doing away with them altogether is a huge call and one that will no doubt raise the ire of many shoppers.
That said, there is a greater good involved here and we should be looking at taking the plastic bag ban even further to include a container deposit scheme and a ban on microbeads, which are found in face scrubs and toothpastes. (The federal government did commit to a voluntary phase-out of microbeads by July 1 this year).
It has been suggested that at least 50 per cent of pollution could be averted with a small range of solutions, including a container deposit schemes, as well as a ban on plastic bags and microbeads.
It’s staggering to think that between 2012 and 2013, Australians consumed 1.5 million tonnes of plastic – equal to 65 kilos for every man, woman and child in this country.
A container deposit scheme has been mooted in Tasmania by the Greens. If adopted, the scheme would bring us into line with almost every other state or territory in the country, bar Victoria.
Such a scheme would not only reduce littering, but would also help reduce the amount of plastic pollution in our marine environments.
Surely that’s a win-win situation.