Bagging the baggers of the bags?!

I also give my plastic to charities so they can bag the items they sell, they always need them.

You could buy biodeagradable plastic bags as bin liners. For wet clothes, I like PUL (polyurethane laminate) fabric bags as they are more long-lasting and will survive a trip through the tumble dryer. The PUL bags also zip up so there’s no escapes (I put wet cloth nappies in them sometimes, not something you want smells escaping from) whereas plastic bags with a knot in them often get ripped apart to get the clothes out for washing. You can also make similar wetbags from polar fleece (two layers together is quite water resistant) or the poly fabric that the green bags are made from. Just unfasten the bag and tip it in the washing machine with the clothes, too easy. The ultra eco-friendly solution would be a lanolised wool bag – water resistant, strong enough to carry lots of stuff and will last through many uses, washable, but will biodegrade at end of life.

Biodegradable bags are also good for lining your compost bin. And cloth bags (eg the calico shopping bags I got from Supabarn in the city many years ago) also make good nappy bucket liners.

Seriously, people. It’s not rocket science. You might use your plastic bag a few times before throwing it in the rubbish, but if it doesn’t biodegrade then it won’t be good for the environment. A ban on non-biodegradable plastic bags will be a good thing for the planet.

All our bags go to our kids’ day care centre that use them for wet clothes after accidents and we use them for bin liners. Bottom line, these plastic bags have to come from somewhere and it’ll just be Glad or some other plastic bag manufacturer cashing in on commercial bag sales going forward.

A friend of mine who worked for the Commonwealth Department of Plastic Bags (whichever one it was looking in to plastic bags) a couple of years ago told me that the “green” bags – the ones you use to avoid the accusing glares of other shoppers – equate to 100 standard shopping bags. We use them in our household, but have found they give up the ghost after a few months through tears, etc.

I’d bet that a standard plastic bag reused a few times would be far more environmentally friendly, at least from the energy/greenhouse standpoint, than the use of the “green” bags.

On another note, I remember hearing that the woman who got the whole plastic bag banning thing up and running in Australia was shown on TV going shopping, using reusable bags. The thing was, she drove a Toyota Landcruiser, or similar, a very short distance from her suburban house to the local shopping centre, absolutely demolishing any environmental gain she made from using reuasable bags.

I notice a lot of stores nowadays won’t give you a bag unless you ask for it. Sometimes that’s fine, I don’t need a bag for the one CD I’ve bought; other times it’s downright absurd, not being offered a bag when I’m clearly buying more than I have arms to carry…

I for one recycle the plastic bags, I use them for my rubbish bins, so then how is it going to change, when I would have to buy plastic bags, so there you go!

Either ban them or put a price on them.

All the “ohhh but I put my garbage in them” people, that’s a just bullshit excuse. If you want to put your rubbish in them, you can buy them like everything else. People in Australia think it’s their god-given right to get their free plastic bag for their one item in the supermarket. The number of people who ask for a plastic bag for their mars bar, pack of cigarettes or one bottle of milk complete with handle is absolutely rediculous and I can bet none of them gain a second use.