Less than 30 years ago the plastic shopping bag was introduced, and now the world must grapple with the monster it has created. Total consumption of plastic bags is estimated at over 500,000,000,000 (that’s 500 billion) annually, or almost 1 million per minute. According to The Wall Street Journal, Americans go through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually, requiring about 12 million barrels of oil to produce. In Australia, 1.1 billion bags per year consumed in Victoria alone. China got through about two billion a day in 2003; heaven knows what the current figure is.
Plastic bags congest irrigation systems, choke rice fields, clog landfills, cause over 100,000 sea turtle and other marine animal deaths every year and are just plain unsightly. No one knows how long they take to break down. According to the BBC, only 1 in 200 plastic bags in the UK are recycled. Unfortunately, that statistic is probably similar for all developed countries.
Indonesia’s culture of using plastic bags in abundance may change because the cost is growing too high; perhaps the profit motive may succeed where environmental education has failed. Ubiquitous plastic packaging is still everywhere, but the cost of producing it has been rising steadily along with the price of the high density polyethylene from which it is made. It can cost a little warung up to Rp 100,000 a month for plastic bags -- a big bite from lean profits. Busy mini markets now spend about Rp 350,000 a week on plastic bags, and Carrefour in Jakarta is said to get through a million plastic bags a day in its 7 outlets. How scary is that…
As we are sadly aware, most plastic bags in Bali are used once and then discarded at the roadside or over a riverbank, or burned in the ditch along with a snifter of kerosene. The plastic bags that do get recycled through EcoBali, Jimbaran Listari, ABC Recycling and others are trucked to Java to be shredded and made into new bags and other products. According to Muriel Ydo, one of Bali’s leading waste management crusaders, the black bags are too thin and weak to be recycled. The thicker bags recycle better and the transparent ones are best. Yet recycling is not a solution, given the energy it requires to collect, process, transport and make them into new products.
Some countries and communities have taken an aggressive stand against plastic bags. Here’s a snapshot of who’s doing what to manage the plastic bag monster. Most efforts are government-led but there are significant grassroots initiatives too.
The most effective action was taken in Ireland in 2002, when it became the first country to introduce a plastic bag tax called PlasTax. The purpose is to change consumer behavior, moving habits from mindless consumption to reducing and reusing. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable and financially unattractive. Shoppers pay a tax of 15 cents (about Rp 1,350) per plastic bag consumed at check out.
The results? Consumption has dropped about 90%, from 1.2 billion to 230 million per year. Litter has been dramatically reduced. Approximately 18,000,000 liters of oil have been saved due to reduced production of plastic bags. Retailers benefit by not having to stock as many single-use plastic bags, which were costing them $50 million a year. Weaker plastic bag companies went out of business, while others have benefited by seizing the opportunity to make reusable shopping bags. Approximately $9.6 million was raised from the tax in the first year, earmarked for a green fund established to benefit the environment. What an attractive solution for Indonesia!
Other countries and cities ban the bags outright. Corsica was the first place to ban plastic bags in large stores in 1999, and in 2005 France voted to ban non-biodegradable plastic bags by 2010. Italy will have an outright ban from 2010. London’s 33 councils will ban ultra thin bags from next year and tax others.
Bangladesh was the first country to ban the manufacture and use of plastic bags in 2002. Millions of discarded bags washed out of the cities onto its vast rice-producing delta were clogging rice fields; in the cities themselves, the bags blocked urban drainage systems and contributed to catastrophic flooding. The polythene ban is leading to a revival of the jute bag industry and other sustainable and biodegradable alternatives. It is widely acknowledged that jute may be one of the solutions to the polythene menace. Jute grows abundantly in Bangladesh and requires much less energy to process than polythene.
San Francisco banned plastic bags in grocery stores in April this year; other states are considering phasing them out. Tiny Bhutan, tucked away in the high Himalaya, banned plastic shopping bags, street advertising and tobacco in 2007 as part of a charming national philosophy to foster Gross National Happiness. We could use a little of that.
Dozens of Australian towns have banned plastic bags, and the Environment Minister asked supermarkets to phase them out entirely by the end of this year. Denmark taxes plastic bags when purchased by retailers. This has had less dramatic results than the Irish PlasTax, which charges consumers directly for each bag used; still, consumption of paper and plastic bags has declined by 66%. In 2007, the Belgium government started phasing in a tax on single-use plastic bags.
In 2003 the head of Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) felt so strongly about the issue that he made an ultimatum -- he would quit if a ban on plastic bags wasn’t implemented. Even though the plastic bag industry lobbied hard, it was drowned out by the majority. In 2006 the EPA, concerned that plastic bags reused for food could create health problems, lifted the ban and now free plastic bags can be offered by food service operators. Even though it was short-lived, the ban’s effect lingers simply because consumers became more aware of the plastic bag menace. In a survey conducted by the administration, 77% of respondents claimed to have cut back on the use of plastic bags since the ban, and 45% of respondents continued not to consume plastic bags after the ban was lifted.
Although it costs Indonesian retailers an increasing amount to supply plastic bags to customers, very few are taking the initiative to sell re-useable bags or suggest that customers bring their own. Political will in this country being what it is, we’re unlikely to see effective national legislation on the plastic bag issue any time soon. There are about 4 million people in Bali; if each one tosses just one plastic bag a day (that’s conservative), we’re looking at a mountain. Multiply this by weeks and months; no wonder our little island seems to be sinking under a mantle of plastic. What to do? If enough people complain to enough supermarket managers, maybe they’ll begin to sell cloth bags. If social influencers begin to use cloth bags, perhaps others will follow. Meanwhile be aware that every plastic bag you and your staff refuse lowers the hideous statistics a fraction, and that education is the key. So tolak plastik, and may a legion form behind you.
