The nightmare of plastic
THE FUTURE OF PLASTIC?
We still don’t know how much we are polluting the world. It is becoming more and more evident that multinationals and supermarkets are only interested in profits and not in the effects on our environment and our health.
Oil is an essential source of energy, but the inescapable truth is that it is running out. The only question is when.
Automakers are always striving to design and produce more efficient engines, but can more be done to reduce our dependence on oil? The answer is yes. The unfortunate truth of who is helping the price of oil rise could be looking at you in the mirror.
We now live in a throwaway society. Almost everything we buy is in a plastic container like milk, soft drinks and water. Grocery bags and black garbage bags are made of plastic.
What are other countries doing and can we learn from them?
Belgium. The government imposes a tax on all free bags in 2007.
Denmark. The government imposed a tax as early as 1994. The use of plastic bags has been reduced by two thirds.
Germany. Supermarkets charge between 4p and 20p for single use bags.
Italy and Spain. Plastic bags have been banned since last year.
India. Plastic bags are prohibited. Stores risk a month of suspension of trading.
Ireland. In 2002 a tax was introduced, now 16 per bag. Usage has been reduced by 90%.
Kenya. Thin plastic bags were banned in 2007. Thicker imported bags were heavily taxed. Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania have adopted a similar policy.
Swiss. Plastic bags cost 10 pence.
Taiwan. Plastic bags were phased out in 2003.
What are we doing? The answer is nothing. Tesco, Britain’s largest retailer, opposes both the charges and the ban on plastic bags. Between 2006 and 2010, WRAP (Waste Resources Action Program) was in charge of monitoring the number of bags and reported a 48 percent drop in the four years. However, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman let the monitoring regime expire in May. The government currently has no policy on reducing plastic bags, despite promises by David Cameron and Nick Clegg when they were in opposition.
Miss Spelman has taken the issue into the high grass, with a ‘waste review’ not due to be reported until next April and policy decisions likely to come much later. At the same time, supermarkets and their trade body, the British Retail Consortium, have refused to set new reduction targets. The BRC has admitted that it has no idea how many bags are handed out now. In May of last year, our supermarkets delivered 475 million plastic bags to their customers. Less than 1% is recycled and most of the rest ends up in our landfills. They have a lifespan of about 1,000 years!
These containers and bags are made from a plastic called Polyethylene Terephthalate, PET for short. It is made from a combination of natural gas and gasoline.
Here are some scary stats:-
In 2006, 31.2 billion liters of water were consumed in the US alone (Pacific Inst. of America) This required more than 900 tons of plastic that needed 17.6 million barrels of oil to produce.
In 1997, Captain Charles Moore, returning from a boat race in Hawaii, chose a short cut back to California along the subtropical North Pacific Gyre Rim, an area seafarers normally avoid. This is a high pressure zone where several currents converge. This brings flotsam from the coasts of Southeast Asia, North America, Canada, and Mexico.
It discovered an island of plastic and flotsam twice the size of Texas, or more than five times the size of the UK. It is 10m deep and is 90% plastic. UN research has established that Navies and commercial shipping dump 639,000 plastic containers a day into our oceans. This represents 20% of all the plastic dumped in our oceans, the other 80% comes from land.
Captain Moore has established that the United States alone produces 105 billion plastic bottles per year. This would consume 59 billion barrels of oil a year. A barrel of oil contains 42 US gallons, 35 imperial gallons (or for those who prefer it, 159 liters). This equates to 2.1 trillion imperial gallons per year.
If you want to contribute your grain of sand, find us at http://www.goecofriendly.org.uk
david hodge
