Plastic perils

PLASTICS IN BRIGHTON AND HOVE
LAST month Brighton and Hove City Council unanimously approved plans for a ban of plastic bags in Brighton and Hove. Conservative councillor Maria Caulfield said: "Eliminating plastic bag use sends a clear message to both consumers and retailers that plastic bags are not good for the environment."

Driven by a wave of international anti-plastic action, community campaign group Plastic Bag Free Brighton has been urging such a proposal and the North Laine Traders' Association already has a successful sustainable bag policy. Now the council will start lobbying the Government to support Brighton and Hove in becoming an entirely plastic bag free zone.

WHY THE WORRY?
GLOBALLY we consume more than 1.2 trillion plastic bags every year but the average person uses each bag for only 12 minutes. The Marine Conservation Society says sea birds and marine mammals are the major victims of plastic litter and millions die every year after eating or becoming entangled in plastics. They do not biodegrade but they do photodegrade, which means they break down in sunlight - but this can take up to 1,000 years and the danger of toxic fragments in seabed sediments, soils, water and food chains is incalculable.

A LITTLE HISTORY
SHOPPING carriers existed in ancient Egypt, but their plastic descendants became popular in the Seventies to replace the paper bag. Once a low-cost solution for customers who had forgotten their own bag, it is now a major form of brand name advertising and an accepted part of the consumer experience.

Matthew Carmichael, writer for The Ecologist magazine, says we have simply forgotten how useless and unnecessary they are: "They split at the bottom. They snap at the top. They hurt your hands. You can't carry them on a bike. They won't stand on their own.

They are the absolute epitome of the phrase cheap and nasty'."

THE PLASTAX
IRELAND introduced a plastic tax of 15 cents (10p) per bag in March 2002. This resulted in a 90 per cent reduction in use and raised 3.5 million euros for new environmental initiatives in the first five months alone.

Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark and parts of Australia now have similar levies but there are worries it has little long-term environmental benefit.

Jane Bickerstaffe, director of the Industry Council for Packaging and the Environment (INCPEN) says: "Putting a tax on carrier bags does nothing to help the environment. It simply adds costs and penalises those who can least afford to pay - the elderly and those without cars."

BAN THE BAG
AS AN alternative to taxation, bans currently operate in South Africa, Taiwan, parts of India and Bangladesh, where plastic bags were found responsible for choking drainage systems and causing mass flooding. Here in the UK the small town of Modbury in Devon was first in the British Isles to ban plastic bags, in May 2007. Local activist Rebecca Hosking single-handedly convinced local shop owners to stop using plastics. Modbury is now inspiring cities the world over to adopt the ban as a solution to plastic litter - and San Francisco in the US is the latest convert.

RECYCLING
THE rate of plastic bag recycling in the UK is estimated at only one in every 200 by action group We Are What We Do, but the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) says this is not without reason. Plastic bags are cheap because they are made with low-quality plastics and the market for recycling them is virtually non-existent. There are high levels of contamination, particularly with advert ink and food, making the recyclate less useable. There are also a variety of plastics in circulation so separation is complex and the high volume-to-weight ratio means collection is expensive.

ALTERNATIVES TO PLASTIC
AN ADDED benefit to a ban or tax is the radical revival in reusable bag industries.

Even Modbury's original cotton design is now available online at bags2keep.co.uk. Biodegradable bags are a viable solution in disposal, but do nothing to address the energy and resources involved in their production.

New reusable plastic bags for life' have Government support and have dramatically reduced disposable plastic bag usage, but environmental groups say organic cotton or other reusable bags are by far the best alternative.

THE OPPOSITION
THE Packaging Institute UK says plastic bags form less than one per cent of street litter and occupy an insignificant space in landfills. They argue a ban or tax would make no difference to global oil consumption and would punish an industry that has the best track record of all in resource minimisation. Modern plastic carriers use 70 per cent less plastic than 20 years ago. Jane Bickerstaffe of INCPEN says: "Deprived of thin bags, people have had to buy tailor-made bags. Tesco reports selling 80 per cent more pedal bin liners. These are thicker and use more resources."

GETTING CREATIVE WITH REUSING
WHEN you cannot recycle, reusing is the answer - and not just for shopping or rubbish. You can tie bags around your knees when gardening and use them to cover wet paint brushes to stop them drying out, protect new shoes in the rain or even melt them down to make a fabric.

Treehugger.com has links to guides for fusing them together to make your own handbags, hats or jewellery. Artist Anna Roebuck has mastered the craft of melting plastics into fabrics and won the UK Gift of the Year Award for Fashion in both 2002 and 2004 for her designs.

THE FUTURE
THE UK Retail sector has agreed to reduce the environmental impact of plastic bags by 25 per cent by 2008, but so far there is no unified approach to achieve these results. If recycling is a nightmare, tax is troublesome and the ban a serious commitment, where do we go from here? In Brighton and Hove the council will begin pursuing a ban and a plastic bag free day is planned for early next year. Peter Stocker of the North Laine Traders' Association said: "We need to get people to think about this.

Even a small change makes you think, Do I really need a bag?'"