Let’s keep plastic bags in the bag

Damien Enright on why we need to reinforce a vital law.

I was surprised to see a supermarket in a west Cork town providing old fashioned blue plastic bags in the old fashioned way; that is, free, and stacked on the checkout console to be taken, at will, by customers.

Hopefully, readers haven’t encountered similar revisionism in the shops they go to.

In another west Cork town, an assistant packed my purchase, a roll of already-wrapped wrapping paper, into a blue plastic bag without my asking. I handed it back. The shop assistant looked at me in surprise. I didn’t want to be a party pooper but I said, “I thought there was a law against free plastic bags.”

In 2002, Ireland took the lead in Europe in reducing plastic waste by taxing the bags and by August of that year national plastic bag consumption had reduced by 90%. Other countries have followed suit; the list contains surprises and includes Rwanda, Israel, Canada, western India, Botswana, Kenya, Eritrea, Tanzania, South Africa, Taiwan, Singapore and the Philippines. China estimates that it will save 37 million barrels of oil each year due to their ban of free bags.

According to government estimates, nearly 1.2 billion bags a year were being passed out free in Ireland before restrictions, roughly 328 bags per capita, per year. Britain, only now considering a national ban on free bags, uses 13 million annually, which will take 1,000 years to decay. Five years ago, data released by the United States Environmental Protection Agency showed that somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags were used worldwide each year. The US is the largest contributor and while some cities, notably San Francisco and Boston have banned free bags, there is no national policy to restrict their distribution. Less than 1% of bags are recycled. It costs $4,000 (€3,000) to process and recycle one ton of plastic which can be sold on the commodities market for $32 (€24). Plastic bags are, of course, oil. It is estimated that 10% of the world’s plastic finds its way into the sea, about one-fifth of it thrown off ships or oil platforms. Plastic bags account for over 10% of the debris washed up on the US coast. A vast plastic waste dump, twice the area of the continental US, lies 500 miles off California, stretching across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. Yachtsmen are astonished to find themselves surrounded by rubbish, day after days, hundreds of miles from land. Plastic bags have been found floating north of the Arctic Circle, near Spitzbergen, and as far south as the Falkland Islands.

Over time, floating plastic is broken down into a plastic dust that marine wildlife mistake for food. Small fish consume tiny bits of plastic as if they were normal plankton. Those fish are then consumed by larger species and the plastic contamination moves up the food chain. The UN Environmental Programme estimates that over a million seabirds, as well as more than a hundred thousand marine mammals, including whales, dolphins, seals and turtles die every year from ingesting its.

In Ireland, it became apparent to the NGO environmental watchdog, Friends of the Irish Environment, that the 15 cent levy charge for plastic bags in shops, set in 2002, was proving a diminishing deterrent in the boom years. FOE called for an increase and, last July the levy was raised from 15 cent to 22 cent. The annual usage, which had risen to 33 bags per capita, returned to 21 bags per capita. Meanwhile, receipts collected by the Revenue Commissioners have realised almost €100m to date for an environmental fund.

Now that the economic boom is over, perhaps the sale of disposable bags will fall further. Meanwhile, shops that give them away free should boycotted. As plastic waste and oil spills wreak havoc on marine life, the world’s oceans are endangered as never before. The Red Sea is hailed by marine biologists as an ecosystem as almost unspoiled.

These days, when I read of Somali pirates seizing loaded oil tankers off the nearby Horn of Africa and the efforts of international navies to combat them, I worry that sheer madness on one side or the other will result in a holed tanker and irrevocable consequences for perhaps the last pristine sea in the world.