Of course it's a meaningless gesture, just like all virtue signalling. The corporates have become bigger wackos than even the eco nuts, instead of providing goods at reasonable prices - their only reason for existence.

They will make millions of $ profit by doing it, before they paid for the plastic bags for customers now customers will pay for the plastic bags.

Banning giving plastic bags a brilliant strategy to turn a loss into a profit.

Good article, with meaningful insights into the stupidity and irrelevance of bans such as those on straws and supermarket plastic bags. While the criticism of companies likes Woolworths is justified, the worst offenders are governments and politicians who try to bask in the perceived glory of such ineffectual actions.

Gee willikers, I won't be able to drink my beer now, plastic straws are banned. I'll have to use pretzels. Not the soft soggy one I've cried into, but fresh new ones.

And as you say, Eric, most of this waste comes from far more populous areas! Including CO2 emissions. But sanity has to start somewhere with Leadership by example!

And none more important than decarbing the economy. With a carbon-free energy source that will also (absolutely guaranteed) turbocharge it!

Plastic can be baled and used in place of coal in direct reduction steel smelting, or as new age, superior, more durable bitumen.

Our waste tyres collected and melted down in industrial microwaves can make around 50,000 barrels of oil P.A. and earn a tidy sum for a few remote outback villages with no economy, when the drought hits!


Then there's Ewaste and better concentration of rare precious metal than any orebody, and virtual child's play to extract. The missing element is affordable energy. Be it converting wast tyres to crude oil or just affordably recycling waste.

Or indeed desalinating/demineralising copious potable water and pushing it inland. For affordable, broad-scale irrigation!

Current (mad hatter) energy policy paradigms and privatisation have made most of this uneconomic!

If however, we had (cooperative) SAFE, CLEAN, CHEAP energy (nuclear/thorium) that cost the consumer as little as 1.98 cents per KwH. And very doable and at a reasonable profit! Electrical energy that cheap will have the energy-dependent, high tech manufacturing queuing to relocate.

Then nothing is impossible, including recycling plastic as many as seven times. or indeed extracting CO2 directly from seawater and with nuclear technology at our disposal. combing it with hydrogen gleaned from the same source.

Via the catalytic cracking of the water molecule, to produce all manner of liquid fuel, plastics and fertiliser.

All proven rather than hypothetical science.

And worthless if we are, as usual, last in the queue to decarb our economy!

Albeit, there's almost enough vehement and ferocious, table-thumping, hot air emanating from Canberra, to do most of the above!
Alan B.

So true Burnie. The banning of disposable plastic shopping is even more annoying.

I have lived in this house for 26 years, bringing my groceries home in plastic bags. I never throw out a plastic bag, unless torn, or full of garbage. I have a dispenser into which go all plastic bags after emptying, to be drawn to line waste paper baskets, &/or enclose rubbish which would get smelly if not removed from the air. Every plastic shopping bag that has come into this house undamaged has been used for a useful purpose. I will now have to buy just as many bags as I have got for free up to now.

This dispenser has never filled, so all our shopping bags have been used for a useful purpose. With our one man garbage collection, paper not enclosed in a bag gets blown all over the street, so we will have to buy small kitchen tidy bags, or litter the street.

Of course if we were real activists we would save all our waste usually discarded in shopping bags, & dump it on parliament house steps. Pity we are not as rabid as the greens.

Of course we can blame Labor for this stupidity. If they weren't totally dependant on green preferences, & green support, even they would not be so stupid as to enact this garbage.

This policy enacted with a coalition government ensconced in Canberra!

DO GREEN PREFERENCES MATTER THAT MUCH?

Hasbeen, I've done exactly the same! And now need to buy PLASTIC BIN LINERS. Which ultimately changes little. And I expect a similar outcome for most folk!?
Alan B.

We have been saving the local newspapers to wrap waste, as of yore; not as good as the plastic shopping bags but useful none the less.

SA banned plastic bags years ago (we are always first to do the bad and stupid things),but you can still use as many free plastic bags as you like for fruit and veg, so we still get scrap bags.

"if the customer wants"...

Do they? Did they ask?

Coles too is now banning "single-use" plastic shopping bags.
I certainly didn't want or ask for that.
Quite the opposite.
Like Hasbeen, I reuse these as garbage bags, which I will now have to buy (from Coles, who will continue to sell dozens of types of plastic bags).

There's no such thing as "single-use" bags.
https://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2015/08/60-ways-to-reuse-plastic-bags.html

These supermarkets presume everyone knows *when* they will shop (so can bring their own bags) and know how *much* they will buy (so they bring enough bags).
The multi-use bags are heavier and less flexible, but we are expected to carry several around at all times, *just in case* we need to pop in to Coles/Woolies.

Of course they will still make home deliveries in the exact same banned bags.

And sell plastic bags.
And sell hundreds of products wrapped in plastic, many coming from China, the world's leading polluter.

Let's not stop or reduce immigration to reduce pollution. That's racist.
Let's not tax Asian countries that pollute. That's racist.
Let's inconvenience everyone else.
To negligible effect on the environment.

Dear Eric Claus,

Please go and do some homework before submitting a piece like this again. To say that banning plastic straws will have little impact because they are such a small percentage of the plastics produced is like saying bullets are relatively harmless because lead products like batteries or sinkers etc are abundant.

Plastic straws produced today will remain intact for well over a hundred years. They enter our waterways because they float, are easily carried into drains, to our rivers, and often into our oceans where their impact on wildlife is well known.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2J2qdOrW44

There is a similar issue with supposedly single use plastic shopping bags. There are a number of studies showing that many of these bags are reused inside the households as bin liners etc. and once they are banned there is an increase in other types of plastic bags to fulfil the role they once had. But it isn't the quantity of plastic which is the issue but rather the fact that current single use bags are lightweight, make up a sizable chunk of randomly disposed plasitcs and are highly susceptible to being blown many miles to impact wildlife.

Perhaps next time you might avail yourself of a few more facts.

Buy your own plastic shopping bags on EBay. 600 for less than $10.

Way to go!

Steele Redux.

You've been sucked in.

Even if anicdotal, reading these posts will tell you the average story. Plastic shopping bags invariably end their life safely in land fill.

I've been diving in the ocean for a period spanning fifty years, and still engaged commercially in the diving industry. Never once have I ever seen a plastic shopping bag in the ocean. It doesn't happen.

What does happen on the other hand, is the retail grocers assn. are a powerful lobby group who have put the wind up idiots like yourself, and led you down the garden path to support increased profits, and easier competition for Coles and Woolworths, against smarter operators such as Aldi.

This one goes into the gay marriage basket of fantasies....

Dear Diver Dan,

Idiots like myself?

Here we go again it seems.

You wrote;

“I've been diving in the ocean for a period spanning fifty years, and still engaged commercially in the diving industry. Never once have I ever seen a plastic shopping bag in the ocean. It doesn't happen.”

Well mate it would appear you are about as blind physically as you are intellectually.

Come for a dive with me at Popes Eye off Queenscliff and you can give me a dollar for every bag we see from when we leave the cut and if we see none I will buy you a decent feed at the Royal.

How did these bags end up in the stomach of the Bryde whale which died near Cairns with the equivalent of 6 square meters of plastic in its gut? Did it walk out of the water and nab them off unsuspecting shoppers in the woolies cap park?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgv5uV64j44

Plastic bags in the ocean look like jelly fish which is a food source for a number of sea creatures. To be saying they aren't an issue is just immature no matter what your political persuasion.

And by the way the neither Woolies, Coles or Aldi are members of the retail grocers associations. If you are going to run a political line try and at least get your spiel right.

diver dan - Quote "I've been diving in the ocean for a period spanning fifty years, and still engaged commercially in the diving industry. Never once have I ever seen a plastic shopping bag in the ocean. It doesn't happen."

You are absolutely wrong, if you added in Australian waters maybe but in Asia too many people do not care and throw plastic bags full of rubbish in the ocean also rivers which flow into the ocean.

SteeleRedux – I wholeheartedly disagree with your comment that: “it isn't the quantity of plastic which is the issue.” The more plastic that gets into the oceans, the more marine life will be impacted. The best thing for marine life is too keep as much plastic out of the oceans as possible. The best way to do that is to go to the biggest sources of mismanaged plastic. Those are mostly in Asia. Trying to reduce the sources of mismanaged plastic waste in Australia will not have a significant impact worldwide, because Australians control their plastic waste very well. There are thousands of times as much plastic waste going into the oceans in Asia, as there is in Australia.

Philip S – Diver Dan is saying that he doesn’t see plastic waste while diving in Australia. Certainly there is considerable plastic waste off the coasts of Asia and that is where it is best to start our efforts to reduce plastic waste into the oceans.

Whale off the coast of Thailand. The video also notes that most plastic waste is from Asia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNAbIx33kwY

Great article. I rarely read such long articles but this one is so on the money.

Like most problems, we tend to treat the symptoms, and ignore the cause, and it would appear this is one such case. Although I will say, trying to Asia on board is going to be pretty much a fruitless exercise.

You see people like to think they are doing something, it makes them feel all warm and fuzzy. Take the back yard rain water tank. How many of these are there but never used? You see once they are full, they no longer catch water, but this does not effect the 'feel good' feeling the offenders get from having a tank.

It's like the failed carbon tax. A country like ours where our population is minute, should not be trying to get trophies for saving the world as we simply can not afford to go it alone.

Dear ericc,

If you were to read my post again you may see the argument I am making is that it is the mobility of an item of plastic which most often determines its impact on wildlife and the environment in general. A plastic water tank on a farm is unlikely to make its way into our oceans but rather be either recycled or disposed of.

Straws and lightweight plastic shopping bags are very numerous and can be transported via wind and water into our creeks, streams and rivers very easily. They are also not able to be recycled with our current systems. These rightly are the types of items targeted.

Dear butch,

Interestingly I believe it was Bangladesh which first banned plastic shopping bags. However it is not Asian plastics which are impacting our wildlife as most of it ends up in the middle of the Pacific eroding away leaving millions of tonnes of microscopic plastic particles in our oceans. Our wildlife is most directly threatened by our plastics full stop. You can either stick your head in the sand or you can be part of a solution.

And sure there are some people who don't use their water tanks, but there are a sizable majority who do and they make a significant impact on water savings.

Steel redux…

I don't care if I appear right or wrong. I know what I think, and I know what I know from observation over a long period of time.

I have dived exclusively the east coast of Australia over its vast length, and some of that time in NZ. never have I seen a plastic shopping bag in the ocean. That's a fact.

As this author points out, why does THIS idiot country called Australia, turn itself into a monty python skit, over situations it is unaffected by…continuously.
And another observation while I'm on a roll, every one of these “stupids”, impacts the greatest, on the poor and less well off. FM I'm over it! If I see another homosexual waving a rainbow flag, I'll bash the bastard!

So once again (rich) Greens have effectively created a $100 a year tax on the poor (who are already getting their power cut off). Woolies is not going to provide super cheap Home brand garbage bags and as usual only stock expensive Name brands; a staff member made a joke about you will have to buy them now.

Dear diver dan,

How on earth do we go from plastic shopping bags to bashing gays? Quite a leap even for someone like you.

However it really tells us the source of your blindness is your ideology. Enough said.

Now mate if you want to come down here and start thumping people just because they are waving a flag then I promise you you will get a swift boot up your backside for your troubles and rightly so. Why is it that those who promote violence against gays are so often closeted themselves? If you have that itch mate go get it scratched rather than threatening to clobber someone.

Or you could just grow up.

So here we have Steely using the lie, "it's well known effect on wildlife". As usual, the useful idiot refuge of those who have absolutely no idea. If he had any idea of it's very minor effect on wildlife, he'd be damn sure to keep it hidden, so as not to spoil the bulldust green narrative.

Perhaps someone would like to advise just what improvement in Asian waters a ban on plastic bags in Oz is likely to achieve.

Like you Diver, I have spent quite a bit of time out the reef, often with a dozen or more on reef charters. I have gutted, filleted & skinned thousands of fish. Nothing like the commercial fisherman, but still thousands.

I have never seen a plastic bag out there or in the gut of any marine creature. If any are getting into the ocean, they damn soon disappeared. I never ever saw a bag on any of the isolated windward beaches on the hundreds of islands I have visited. Lots of flotsam of course, most of it natural, but some man mad junk.

The most common man made rubbish on those beaches was shoes & particularly thongs. Never a pair of course, so not much use to the poor beachcomber, but lots of them. I wonder when the green ratbags will start a narrative on banning them?

Bags disappear very quickly on land too. I used to buy calcium & phosphorous powder to use in my foals feed to promote bone growth. I would get a couple of kilo of each, in plastic shopping bags from the produce store. In my feed shed, with the only sunlight coming through the open roller door, those bags would degrade & start to crack up in a month. After another month in the milk crate I used as an inside bin they would be crumbling into very small pieces, ready to join the sand & rocks in the soil, contributing perhaps to the aeration, but doing nothing harmful there.

As the article notes, over 95% of all plastics in the seas comes from countries that aren't the west. Yet its the west that frets and tries to 'do sumfing' to fix it.

Since the only way to fix it is to get the 'others' to 'do sumfing' the problem won't be fixed - assuming it is a problem.

So why do it:

1. Warm inner glow of saving the environment.
2. For Woolies et al its a win win. Make money while appearing to be a good corporate citizen. They think they can buy off the greenies. They can't. The greenies are never satisfied.
3. Getting people to participate in these things creates a bias in their future actions. If people are induced to do something of little actual benefit they are much less likely to believe those who oppose the action or the next action because to do so would be to admit that they were easily duped. Induce someone to donate to some guy wearing a koala suit and they're unlikely to believe research showing the koala's aren't endangered because it would prove they were duped. It why the fact that recycling is useless isn't generally accepted. So many people bought into it that they can't admit they were misled.

The more things change....

mhaze there are lots of good recycling businesses. Steel, aluminium, other metals, plastic, paper, cardboard, pallets. Not at all useless. Very good business.

ericc, some recycling, done at factory/industrial level, of waste generated in the manufacturing process is of some use, saving some loss, although rarely recouping the full value of the material involved.

Virtually every other form of recycling requires subsidising by the public to some level.

Any recycling business making a profit from domestic waste is being supported in that profit by rate/taxpayers.

Time to bite the bullet, & burn the junk.

While I am personally in favour of changing our plastics use, I am dumbfounded as to why little ol Oz thinks we can save the world when the world does not appear to care a hoot.

Personally I have seen plastic bags in the ocean, although more so in estuaries, but I guess that's still the ocean.

I also watched a doco on the plastic content of krill. While I don't remember the percentage, 17% comes to mind, being 17% of krill was in fact plastic.

Of cause the problem is the opponents of plastic show images of whales with loads of plastic rubbish in their mouths. This is utterly false as whales eat tiny food (krill). If only they knew the damage they do to their own arguments.

Unfortunately, while straws can be replaced with paper, which by the way means cutting down trees, plastic bags are harder to replace, especially when consumers have to dig into their own pockets. Time will tell.

Andrew Bolt, in today's "Telegraph" points to the fact that Woolworths are selling plastic reusable bags but with the admonition not to wash them, Bolt points out (and gives references) that not washing the bags is a health hazard that can possibly lead to death.

Thanks for this Is Mise

I couldn't access the Daily Telegraph but I found this which has quite a few decent references.

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2018/06/23/on-banning-plastic-bags/

A reusable bag weighs 30 grams and a "single use" plastic bag weighs 30 grams so 70 times as much. You can probably put 3 times as much stuff in a reusable bag so lets say you need to use it 25-30 times to make the environmental impact equal to a "single use" bag. If you use your "single use" bag to pick up dog poo, collect your chicken bones, line your garbage bin, line your little compost bin or use it for some other purpose that you would have to buy a bag for; this calculation becomes more complicated and with every other use it starts to favour the light weight "single use" bag more and more.

My guide would be if you are throwing a lot of "single use" bags away every week, get some reusable bags. If you aren't throwing any away, keep reusing your single use bags.

I find it hard to believe that anybody puts raw meat in a reusable bag. If you are not doing that it is unlikely that reusable bags would carry the kind of bacteria that is being claimed in these articles. To be fair I have not studied the references which make these claims. I am sure though that if you are bringing home, packets of sesame wheats, oreos, sultana bran, potato chips and pepsi like I do, there is a very minimal risk of anything to do with bacteria. It seems silly to wash the bags unless you spill something in them. I have a couple bags I've used for a couple years and they are still clean and usable.

Side note: I also use the reusable bags for other purposes than just groceries so that would add to the number of "uses" per year.

Andrew Bolt highlighted the comment I made in the article about the enemies of environmental protection using these meaningless gestures to pour scorn on all environmental protection initiatives by concluding along the lines of "Isn't this just typical of green policies, they don't do any good for the environment and they might even kill you." Bolt doesn't believe in global warming and doesn't generally think any green initiative is worthwhile and this kind of policy helps him make his point.

Dear Hasbeen,

You can be a thoroughly daft old coot sometimes mate.

You wrote;

“I have never seen a plastic bag out there or in the gut of any marine creature.”

Well unless you are slaughtering sea turtles, dolphins or sea birds you probably wouldn't have you clown.

Then there was this little bit of rambling;

“If he had any idea of it's very minor effect on wildlife, he'd be damn sure to keep it hidden, so as not to spoil the bulldust green narrative.”

Hidden? You don't even have to be in Australia to know of the devastation these things wrought on our sea turtles for instance.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3265825/Shocking-x-ray-autopsy-photos-shopping-bags-kill-sea-turtles-leaving-balls-plastic-stomach-rupture-intestines.html

“Senior veterinarian at Sydney's Taronga Zoo Dr Larry Vogelnest said 70 per cent of turtles they get in have ingested plastic and about 20 per cent of those end up dying”

Well there is at least one thing you are right about, shopping bags don't last intact in the ocean for a very long time. That means it isn't the shopping bags out of Asia that are doing the damage to our sea turtles but our very own.

Why in the hell do I repeatedly have to explain the obvious to you each and every time?

Useless idiot is an apt description.

I feel that stores which ban plastic bags are not really helping with the entire situation. Plastic bags that are obtained after shopping are most often than not, used to line trash bins. If shoppers are not able to get their supply from stores, then they would still buy from an alternate source. Then, how do we really conclude as to how the plastic scene is currently doing?

I'm just interested to see what people are going to do when the governments decide to go ahead to ban Styrofoam and plastic. I'm actually pretty sure that we'll find a way to deal with it if this happens. It doesn't seem like we all suffered too hard in the past when there wasn't such tools around. I mean, what's wrong with drinking right from the rim of the can or the bottle. We'll make do!

nathandavidson - We could make due without cars and cigarettes and alcohol and a thousand other things but that doesn't mean it is a good idea to ban them.

If you start banning things that people like to use for no good reason where do you stop? Will you have the straw police coming around to throw straw users in jail?

Banning straws won't make a bit of difference to the amount of plastic in the oceans and then when you ask people to get behind a plan that really would do some good like increasing the size of marine parks, putting in more gross pollutant traps or reducing contaminated runoff to the oceans, they say no we already tried your ban on straws and it didn't work. Why should we think this new plan would work?

Another Article from America with similar sentiments

https://www.dailywire.com/news/33611/walsh-walsh-america-responsible-almost-none-matt-walsh