Plastic Bags
Try and avoid using plastic bags by taking a reuseable shopping bag with you whenever you go shopping. There are many shops and supermarkets that sell reuseable bags - bags for life or cloth bags, which are stronger reusable bags for your shopping. The bag on the right was one RoWAN helped the community launch in Ullapool.
Plastic bags can be saved and reused as shopping bags or as bin liners.
Many supermarkets have a collection point for recycling plastic bags. Check sort-it (right) to find out where you can recycle plastic bags in the Highlands. Locally, Morrisons car park in Alness and Inverness and Tesco carpark in Dingwall and Inverness have plastic bags recycling collection points.
The following video shows the impact of plastic in the marine world.
There are alternatives to plastic bags and below are listed FAQs on biobags/cornstarch bags:
Q: Will the Biobags bags dissolve in water?
A: No, the bags do not dissolve in water. The degradation is due to bacterial activity. In the sea, this will typically take a couple of months. However, as the bags are mainly made from starch, they can also be digested by larger animals.
Q: What is the shelf life of the BioBags?
A: Different material grades will have different shelf life. The shelf life is usually about 2 years if stored indoors at "normal" temperature and humidity.
Q: What about the environmental impact of cornstarch bags?
A: They do produce methane as they biodegrade and use energy in manufacture, transportation etc. but as the original plants that are used for manufacture grow they absorb carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas).
Compostable (and biothene) bags have another benefit in landfill in that because they degrade quickly they allow the contents to degrade more quickly too thereby reducing space taken up.
Q: What about paper bags? Don’t they have an environmental impact too?
A: There’s a LOT of debate around this. Paper bags are heavier to transport and consume energy and resources especially water in manufacture (though recycled paper takes much less energy then virgin paper manufacture). However paper bags don’t cause littering or problems to wildlife in the same way as plastic. Buying paper bags made of 100% recycled paper helps to create a market for recycled paper which helps Councils etc to sell waste paper.
Q: “I couldn’t charge 10p for a bag on a £50 (or a 75p) sale.”
A: They do in Ireland, Germany etc and Ireland saw a 90% reduction in bag use. In this country, Lidl charge for bags (being a German company) and their shoppers either pay or take their own. It’s a question of getting used to it, like seatbelts or anti-smoking legislation. A small charge is an incentive for people to form the habit of taking their own bags. It seems to have an almost instant impact.
Q: “I might lose customers to another shop.”
A: Not if everyone is doing it! Feedback from businesses so far indicates that individual traders would be happy to charge if everyone else was too, so that it’s clear to shoppers that charging is an environmental statement for Ullapool not a money-making exercise.
Facts
Scotland’s plastic bag use is around 1 billion bags per annum. Scotland’s population is around 5 million ie each person uses around 1000 bags per annum. Ullapool’s population is 1,500 and so Ullapool’s annual plastic bag consumption is around 1,500,000. This of course doesn’t include the huge summer increase.
Prices
30 litre cornstarch bags (generous supermarket size) cost around 12 ½ p, medium cost around 9p, small gift bag size around 5p
Large cornstarch bags (generous supermarket size) cost around 12 ½ p, medium size cost around 9p, small gift bag size around 5p.
In the last Scottish Executive, there were proposals for a levy on plastic bags as per Ireland and the Environment Committee considered evidence on the subject. Responses are listed here.
See also Friends of the Earth’s submissions to the Committee and their written evidence.
Packaging / plastics:
Printer-friendly version
PDF version
