I was shocked to learn that the 'green' bags (now in a variety of colours) bought at supermarkets are not biodegradable. Now they're turning up in truck loads in second hand clothing stores. They are just profit making tools for supermarkets. Until a complete ban or a price is imposed on each bag, the problem won't go away

There is so much emotion wrapped up in plastic bags. However, in Australia, there doesn't seem to be much hard evidence that plastic bags are the blight or the environmental menace they are made out to be.

Litter is ugly and careless disposal of plastic bags can cause distress or death for indivdual animals, but I don't think future generations will reflect on plastic bag use. They'll want to know why we didn't act on greenhouse gas emissions, habitat destruction, land degradation and toxic emissions into our aquifers, rivers, coasts and oceans.

Rather than fret about plastic bags, we should be more concerned about what we put in them. That's where the real and irreversible damage is occuring.

I generally take my green bags to the supermarket and carry a backpack for other miscellaneous purchases, yet our household still seems to have a continually full cupboard for plastic bags, which are then reused as bin liners, etc.

Now, if we were to somehow exhaust this somewhat magical supply of plastic bags I genuinely wonder what we'd do for bin liners. Presumably there are enviro-friendly products out there, but I've never gone looking for them since we've never needed them. With this in mind, I was wondering if anyone could recommend a biodegradable, enviro-friendly bin liner to use once we ween ourselves off the plastic bags?

Back in 1990, I received my first reusable cotton bag ( meant for taking to local markets), after participating in a beach clean-up. Previous to that, for approx five years, I had been taking my own brown paper bags, reusing store ones, into the supermarkets. Then I began to purchase reusable bags through animal rights groups and such.

The inevitable quizzical looks on the faces of the grocery clerks and kids bagging my purchases is something I will always remember. I even had some of those employees try to convince me to "take a clean" paper bag. Later on it was difficult to stop bag kids from automatically bagging up my stuff into "paper or plastic." I got used to answering the "paper or plastic?" question with, "Cotton. I brought my own bags."

Even though there has been so much press about how and why we should use our own bags, I have spent YEARS bullying my own extended family into taking reusable bags that i provided. One male in my family FINALLY started taking his own bags when manufacturers came out with what he considered to be a "more masculine" type of bag! Now he complies nearly all of the time.

After YEARS of pleading, nagging, cajoling and pointing out the many reasons for taking our own bags, I still have to police my family on this issue. Now I am trying to get them all to STOP bringing home plastic bags with their take-away meals. It is an uphill battle----especially because they feel freakish when "no one else is doing it." Good old peer pressure.

I consider myself a pioneer in this boycott of plastic bags. In my home town of Santa Barbara, one of my City Councilmen said that marine mammals and sea turtles, et al, are not harmed by ingesting plastic bags. He said that the bags are pooped out by the animals. So disheartening to hear such drivel.

Meanwhile, there is a big push on here to ban the plastic bags in grocery stores. I am certain it will not become a reality, people bringing their own bags, until the fee for taking plastic bags is absolutely punishing.

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone I know has told me they cannot do without their plastic grocery bags---because the bags are used as bin liners. What ridiculous reasoning! The news media should air more stories on the Pacific Gyre and related plastics pollution, until everyone gets the point. Then charge at least $.25 per bag for paper or plastic. That should bring enough people around, then peer pressure will do the rest.

Paper bags is the best solution, they can be made from recycled paper and keep being recycled as new!

"These environmentally damaging bags – produced to be used once and then thrown away"

All of my plastic bags are used at least twice. I only acquire enough free ones that I need for some other purpose. Any additional need for carrying, I do using reusable bags.

None of the plastic bags I use entangle, drown, asphyxiate, and starve animals. None of them adorn trees and fences. None of them have gone into the Pacific. None of them have entered the environment as litter.

"Most of us are aware that plastic bags create litter"

This is a bizarre statement. It's as if human action is not responsible for littering. How about some acknowledgement of the fact that littering is an intentional and selfish and irresponsible act. These articles have little credibility with me because they fail to emphasize that the problem originates from selfish, irresponsible jerks who litter.

(You might be able to tell that I went to a school which, unusually, had virtually no litter. Other schools had tons of litter lying around even though it was before the era of plastic bags.)

Joseph, the maths that you've quoted from the EU are wrong. The link in your article goes to a media release which states: "The total volume of plastic carrier bags produced in Europe in 2008 was 3.4 million tonnes". Volume measured in tonnes? I think not. More importantly, Australian plastic shopping bags weigh just under 4 grams so 3.4 million tonnes means that Europeans use 850,000,000,000 - 850 billion bags or 2800 bags per person!

To give this plastic bag issue some perspective, Australians use 6 billion bags each year. These weigh 24,000 tonnes in total which is a fraction of one percent of the total waste stream produced by us Aussies. The call to ban plastic bags is all about symbolism and tokenism. It has nothing to do with solving a genuine environmental issue.

Ban the bags. It is that simple. People will complain for a few months then find something else to occupy their thoughts while they carry their reusable bags to the store and back. Why are we so afraid of change? the plastic bag was an item invented a few decades ago and times have changed since then. We are no longer in the 70 or 80s thinking resources are unlimited and waste is simpel 'taken away' We have more people, more waste and a lot more plastic bags. If they we re charged for like they should be as they are not free, then people would complain for a few months again then forget about it and more on to something else. But consumption would go down by about 90% based on what happens in other western locations. This shows how quickly people realise these plastic bags are not necessary. Plastic bags were made by an industry who generated the demand for their product by promoting free check out bags, and now people under 30 don't know any but plastic bags.
Plastic bags are the number 1 item in a landfill. They cause all sorts of headaches there. From blowing around and blowing off site, to trip hazards. When waste is thrown out, sealed in a bag, that waste is then sealed away from the decomposition activity in a landfill and it impedes the landfill from working as it was designed to do. When recycle waste is put in a plastic bag and then dumped in the recycled bin, it contaminates the whole bin as the plastic bag is not recyclable in that bin.
People say they reuse the bag as bin liner so that makes it OK. That is a fallacy. So instead of using a bag (that takes 100’s of years to biodegrade), for 30 minutes they now use it for a couple of days. That is still nothing in the time line of the bag. If they want plastic bags as bin liners then go buy some bigger and landfill-biodegradable bags. So instead of 10 grocery store bags, you will use maybe 2 and they will biodegrade away in a few years.
When looking at biodegradable bags, be careful as there are a number of technologies available that are not really biodegradable when their details are revealed. There is a lot of green washing by these people to make their plastic bags sound as though they are biodegradable. For examples
1) Plastic made from plants or bioplastics are not biodegradable. Often it is the same plastic molecule they extract from oil so the plastic has no different behaviour.
2) Compostable plastic will not biodegrade in a landfill. It will only biodegrade in a commercial compost facility and if they take it. Does any one know were a commercial compost facility is? If you do are you going to drive many kms across town to drop off a few bags there?
Compostable plastic is not recyclable and has to go to trash for kerbside collection. Once in the trash it will not biodegrade
3) Some people offer degradable bags and sort of hint at biodegradation or even boldly state it. If the bag is degradable it means it is made from an oxodegradable additive added to the plastic. Oxo degradable means the plastic breaks down into small fragments of plastic and this is worse for the environment. Oxo plastics need oxygen and often sunlight to work. Which means they will not fragment in a landfill but last as many 100 of years as a normal bag. They are not recyclable either so have to go to trash which means to a landfill where they will not biodegrade.
4) A more recent technology is landfill biodegradable plastic. Again this is an additive added to conventional plastic to make it susceptible to digestion by microorganisms in a landfill. Sice almost all of our plastic bag waste goes to a landfill, this type of additive is the only type that will cause all these bags to biodegrade there.
5) So when you go to buy a green plastic bag, if says compostable or degradable, you know it will not biodegrade in landfill and the manufactures of these bags are trying to con you. If it says landfill-biodegradable or will biodegrade according to ATM D5511 you can feel confident that the bag will actually biodegrade when disposed to a landfill.
See www.plasticwastesolutions.com for more on this topic. This is an important topic on a huge problem.

While environmental programs like reducing plastic bags may be insignificant in the scheme of things, they are targeted at people that aren't normally 'environmentally' inclined. It's a foot in the door for bigger outcomes like organics recycling, and reduced energy and water use.

BTW, Has anyone here googled the LCA of a plastic bag- I did...
http://www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/resources/documents/LCA_shopping_bags_full_report%5B2%5D.pdf

Pretty much any reusable bag has a better environmental outcome than their disposable coutnerparts.

Also there seems to be lots of confusion around the difference between degradable and compostable. Just because the bag has broken down into smaller bits doesn't mean its decomposed.

And what does any of this information tell us? That the 'green bag' is the best option? NO!!! It tells us that we need to completely rethink how we view our purchasing habits and waste disposal.

People always think reduce, reuse, recycle. There's a couple missing before the three R's:
Avoid- the purchase in the first place/ ask your self 'Do I really need it'?
Replace- the bag with something you already have. 99.99% of people already own a variety of bags like backpacks, messenger bags and handbags- why not use these before seeking another alternative that requires energy, water etc to be made.

I live in a house of two and we attempt to accumulate and produce as little waste as possible (and it isn't hard)- we produce around:
*5 litres of ogranic waste that goes to our compost/bokashi
*5-8 litres (by volume) of landfill waste each week. We either dispose of this using a bag from something we've already bought (e.g bread) or a purchased compostable bag.
*10-15 litres (volume) of recycling.

Our local Council provides an 80L landfill and recycling bin. I'll let you do the math on how often we have to put out the bins for collection.

And no, there's no tie-dye clothes and patoulli wofts in our house.

From reading the above posts it can be seen that many people do not understand the issue and are getting confused by all the tangent points of view. From an engineering point of view we need to break the problem down into the various parts then work on those one at a time in order to solve the whole problem. Otherwise as someone said above, people just get overwhelmed by the environmental problems of today and switch off.
First we ought to ought to be making a product that will last though the next 20 generations or more as plastic waste. Bury it in a hole in the ground is out of site out of mind mentality. This is not a sustainable approach. What we make in our generation we should clean up in our generation. Not leave it to future generations to clean up. How can we justify using a plastic bag for just a few minutes just because we are too unorganised to bring a reusable bag with us. Using it a 2nd time for a bin liner for a few days makes very little difference. That plastic bag will last for centuries in a landfill or it will fragment into little bits and be blown all over the country side and our water ways. Neither is good. Is that what we want to be remembered by future generations, that we were too selfish to only consider our convenience over their environment for an item we do not need?
Someone said plastic bags are only 0.1% of a landfill as they are such thin walled bags so not a problem. They do not get it. Plastic bags are the number one item in a landfill. They cause innumerable problems with clogging machinery, trip hazards, they blow out of the landfills into the surrounding environment, including the oceans for coastal based landfills. A landfill is not a hole in the ground but a sophisticated biodegradation chamber where many things are broken down to their base constituents again. Except plastic.
The modern landfill, which is what many big municipalities are moving to, is quite a complex and expensive engineering operation. With reticulation of leachate, gas collection and export or electricity generation and export, chamber capping, leachate control, and groundwater monitoring. Hence to impede this with contents in plastic bags costs the landfill its efficiency.
People use these plastic bags for many incorrect reasons and without knowing it, create more problems and more waste. When material goes to a landfill in a plastic bag, that bag’s contents are then sealed off from the landfill and they will impede the function of a landfill. If people collect their recycled bottles and cans etc in a plastic bag and them dump that in their kerbside recycled bin, when it gets to the recycle sorting facility that bag and its contents are picked up and thrown to the rubbish and all that recyclable content is lost to the landfill. Recycling is about preventing the further use of new materials from being mined or farmed. With a growing awareness of our limited resources then we need to be thinking about recycling more and more and getting recycling efficiency up to 80% or so not the 20% odd we have now. It goes back to the convenience for me now attribute mentioned above. People need a lot of education as to why not to use a plastic bag. Use of a reusable one saves another plastic bag from going to a landfill every time.
What about bin liners? The grocery store plastic bag is a small bag and you have to use a lot of them all the time, which is why many people justify to themselves walking out of a store with 10 bags of groceries all the time, every week. One of the other commenters tried to confuse the issue about having to reuse a reusable bag 30 times before it was worth it. It is a lot simpler than that. If you want a plastic material bag to line a bin then go buy a larger bag and one that is ‘landfill-biodegradable’. That way you use far less bags and they will biodegrade away in a few years. i.e. you are not leaving a legacy of plastic waste for your descendents. If you are aghast that you have to actually go buy a bag when the grocery store gives them for free then remember there is no such thing as free, someone somewhere is paying. You pay in higher grocery store prices, the environment pays, your descendents will inherit your waste and pay in a loss of the environment quality that we enjoy now. So you paying a few cents for your landfill-biodegradable bin liners is a lower cost than the alternative.
So we have 1) covered the taking of plastic bags and the problems they cause in their disposal, 2) shown the bag needed as a bin issue is a fallacy, 3) discussed the beneficial use of landfill biodegradable bags.
Some people and this one is the hardest to understand, some people say it is my right to use a plastic bag and the government has no role in interfering with that. While there is merit in the concept of that thought, we are now past those days. With so many people and so much disposable plastic waste being generated every day and people taking very little responsibility for it, then something has to change. If we all used plastic bags and then all took them to a recycle facility to support business that made products from them, then that argument may have more merit. But people don’t, they toss their bags in the trash without a second thought. Even when there is a recycle bin next to a rubbish bin, people still dump their waste to the rubbish bin. Until people are voluntarily willing to be responsible for their plastic waste they are making then we have to have some sort of intervention to stop the environment being polluted and save these valuable resources for future use. Many municipalities do not collect plastic bags in their kerbside recycling programs. So users have to drive to distant special plastic collection centres for plastic bags or dump them in the trash. I.e. we are set up to not recycled bags. Therefore from a practical sense, to get this problem under control there has to be government intervention to get us off our current path of high levels of plastic bag waste on to a better path of little plastic waste.

Ban the disposable bag is a good option to do this.