The Cure's The Dilemma

"We have replaced one problem with another. Bags for life have become bags for a week. When we go shopping, we should remember our bags like we remember our phones."
"After all this public awareness, we'd expect plastic consumption to drop in supermarkets, but it's actually increasing."
"It is clear from this data that many people are simply swapping 'single-use' plastic bags for these plastic bags for 'life'."
"The impact of this simple substitution is a major concern, given the significantly higher plastic content of bags for life."
Fiona Nicholls campaigner, Greenpeace U.K.

"It's shocking to see that despite unprecedented awareness of the pollution crisis, the amount of single-use plastic used by the U.K.'s biggest supermarkets [Tesco] has actually increased in the past year."

"Our survey shows that grocery retailers need to tighten up targets to drive real reductions in single-use packaging and items. We need to address our throwaway culture at [its] root through systems change, not materials change -- substituting one single-use material for another is not the solution."

Juliet Phillips, campaigner, EIA Ocean

Sales of "bags for life" rose to 1.5bn last year as the amount of plastic used by supermarkets increased to 900,000 tonnes, Greenpeace research has found.  Getty Images

Single-use plastics are nothing if not convenient. That is, when the shopper is conveying purchases from shop to home. Once home, the bags are divested of their contents and tucked away somewhere handy for future use. Oh, not? Re-used in the kitchen as trash containers to be put out with the weekly municipal pick-up? Not really? Not viewed as handy and temporary containers of objects taken from point A to point B? Wrong again?! Right; they're crumpled into tight little balls and tossed into the trash. 

We're busy, can't spend valuable time thinking about how to reuse flimsy bags obviously meant for single use. Who are we, after all, to second-guess the intended use of a shopping emporium's disposable temporary convenience? Of course, rising shoppers' consciousness poked occasionally by environmentalists' cries of pained discovery when plastics are found in all their glory, infinitesimally small and intrusively ubiquitous in common public spaces and remote natural places alike, has resulted in little pinpricks of guilt; not only is human activity resulting in a changing climate, our sloppy habits are criminally littering our public living spaces and nature's most compelling landscapes.

 

  Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images

Solution? Charge a nominal fee for each of those bags. Urge people to bring along more permanent bags and tell them they're helping the planet recover from humankind's egregiously destructive activities. Extol the virtues through public education campaigns of moving seamlessly toward the use of more permanent-type bags expressly designed for multiple, ongoing use. For the markets those bags remain valuable for their printed advertising on each 'permanent' bag, used over and over again potentially, as a permanent fixture.

The U.K. government had a brainstorm of an idea to wean its public off disposable bags to re-set their habits toward a permanent bag culture, "bags for life". Sturdy bags, re-usable, diminishing the "plastic footprint" of large supermarket chains, educating the public and doing a great public good in the process. All sweetness and light, until a published report by Greenpeace and the country's Environment Investigation Agency which revealed the move to be more fantasy than reality in its outcome.

Sales of plastic "bags for life" rose 26% last year to 1.5 billion

It was revealed in the joint report that in 2019 ten enterprises reflecting Britain's largest grocery marketers have sold over 1.5 billion "bags for life", which calculates out to an average of 54 such bags per household in the nation. Topping off the 959 million "bags for life" sold last year in major supermarkets in Britain. 

The frozen food chain Iceland reported having sold 34 million "bags for life" this year representing a remarkable increase over the 3.5 million such bags sold the year before. "Typically,  you pay for these once and can return them for a free replacement when they wear out", went the cajoling, optimistic government line in its initial 2015 promotion campaign. The report, "Checking Out on Plastic II", however, found "bags for life" sold by the largest supermarkets in 2019 totalled close to 50,000 tons of plastic, over and above the more than 3,330 tons of single-use plastic bags.

According to the report, total plastic packaging in Britain's supermarkets came to 995,000 tons in 2018. A 80 percent reduction in bags circulated by the largest food retailers was seen in the wake of the plastic bag levy; unfortunately the "bag for life" sales managed to counter this effect, but to what degree is still not completely understood. Close to nine million tons of plastic are known to end up  every year in the ocean, according to Ocean Conservancy, the non-profit U.S. environmental group.

The U.K. Plastics Pact which the largest supermarket chains in Britain joined as an industry-wide initiative to "tackle the scourge of plastic waste", included a pledge to replace plastic packaging with reusable, recyclable or compostable materials. The environmental campaign group expressed its doubt such a move would result in a reduction of the plastic footprint of these companies. The truth being, according to Fiona Nicholls, supermarkets' and retail companies' performance in reducing their plastic footprint has been poorly realized.

Greenpeace and the Environmental Investigation Agency say more plastic is going on shelves than ever before

 

 

Single-Use Plastic Exceptions

"It would be hard to overemphasize the importance of plastics in modern society."
"Just think what our world would be like if we didn't have garbage bags. It's not a frivolous use -- it's absolutely necessary for sanitation."
"We were gyrating with hula hoops, going to Tupperware parties [in the 1960s], listening to vinyl records, playing with plastic toys and drinking from plastic cups through plastic straws. And we were paying for it all with plastic."
"[The current backlash against plastic is no all-or-none situation]: It never is in science. You have to evaluate each of these uses on their own merit."
"This business of having a plastic-free world, it's just nonsense."
Dr. Joe Schwarcz, director, Office for Science and Society, McGill University, Montreal

A surgeon holds a syringe prior to administering chemotherapy on June 7, 2019, at the Georges-Francois Leclerc centre in Dijon, central-eastern France.   ROMAIN LAFABREGUE/AFP/Getty Images

"Climate change is now a lot more real for more people than ever. To most, it falls under the umbrella of 'environmental harm', so it all gets lumped together."
"The problem is, being aware that something needs to be done about the environment, and actually doing something about the environment is a big leap. They have all the worry of climate change, and none of the control."
"That it might be negligible overall [to give up plastic straws and feel virtuous about it] is not really the issue, it's the feeling of making a difference, of being able to affect outcomes -- that is the main thing."
"[Politically, straws are easy targets], something that could be removed without much upheaval, for maximum political gain."
"The disposable plastic furor isn't bad, per se [but some objects will always require durable, flexible, sterile material for proper function]. Syringes, IV stuff. Could you make plastic alternatives that have similar properties but are more biodegradable? Maybe."
Dean Burnett, neuroscientist, author, Cardiff, Wales

Disposable plastic items in the health sector aren’t a major concern, experts say. Tim Boyle/Getty Images

A study conducted a few years back by researchers at Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh found that on average, a single abdominal hysterectomy was responsible for generating 9.2 kilograms of waste. Half of that waste was disposable gloves, thin film packaging, wrappers, hard plastic trays and other plastics. The idea of the study was to weigh the environmental impact involved in the second most common major surgery for women in the U.S. and Canada; a hysterectomy.

The team studied 62 surgeries where researchers immediately on the completion of each of the surgeries entered the operating theatre to carefully collect, sort, label and weigh the solid waste and recycling. When politicians announce that it is time for single-use plastics to be regulated against in view of the vast amount of plastics circulating as waste in our environment, in the world's oceans, they have a point; we do package consumer items much, much too much.

On the other hand, there are exceptions; nothing is ever as simple as it seems at first glance. Syringes, IV tubing, saline bags, plastic-wrapped drugs, catheters -- all are objects made of plastic without which modern hospitals would find it difficult to operate, ensuring adequate sterile conditions to contain bacterial contamination. Some  hospitals, cognizant of the ultra abundance of waste plastics have undertaken steps to make operating rooms and other patient care areas less wasteful.

According to an article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, up to 85 percent of hospital garbage is non-hazardous solid waste. Plastic packaging is a typical source of waste plastic where many surgical products are double-wrapped. Blue sterile wrap is used to cover surgical instruments, but it can be recycled into curbside blue boxes. Hospitals in Quebec sort plastics, to send them to recyclers.

Hospitals began their shift to plastic, single-use sterilized products a decade ago, transitioning from sterilizing reusable products in a bid for absolute sterility, and to ensure that pathogenic bacteria not be transferred from one patient to another through re-used instruments, when sterilization processes failed. "The shift has been done and, while it's not impossible, it's difficult to undo", stated Jerome Ribesse, director general of Synergie Sante Environnement and a member of the board of the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care.

According to Vito Buonsante, plastics program manager at Environmental Defence (what a name to match with an enterprise!) disposable plastic items emanating from the health sector do not constitute a major concern. It is the unnecessary use of plastics for the production of cutlery, plates and take-out containers that would usefully be tackled first. Straws are symbolic for environmentalists, yet they account for little in terms of weight in total plastic waste.

Think in terms of plastics of merit and long-term use. Say, for example, flat-screen TVs, computers, water pipes. Indispensable to our modern way of life.

Operating room. - 123RF Stock Photo