Thursday, 28 February, 2008
- 28 Feb 08, 05:58 PM
Bags
Where do you stand on the Plastic Bag Debate? M&S has announced that in their food department customers are going to be in an effort to reduce consumer demand. A good move or a publicity stunt when there are many other ways M&S could be moving ahead towards their promise of being carbon neutral by 2012? There are other ways - The Irish Government introduced a plastic bag tax in 2002 and claims use has fallen by 90%. Even China has banned ultra thin bags and free bags will be banned from June of this year - as a result the country's leading plastic bag producers closed down. So is this just ‘greenwash’ or a good thing? We will also debate whether the environmental lobby is ruling our lives.
Afghanistan
It has just been announced that - and as luck would have it tonight we have a film from Alastair Leithead about the strategy in that country. Six years after the fall of the Taleban, President Karzai has control of just 30% of the country, US National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell told a Senate committee. The Taleban hold 10%. So what are the US the British and Afghan governments getting right and wrong in Afghanistan? The British in Helmand province may think experience in Northern Ireland, and 1950s Malaya puts them at the forefront of counter insurgency, but the Americans running the south east now seem well ahead, as Alastair Leithead reports.
See you later, Kirsty
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Ban the Bags!!!
They're bloody awful things, well done to m and s but they don't go far enough!
I am shocked that the British media has kept the Harry story quiet- perhaps they were just scared of the consequences if they did run with it.
And I have said this on a previous post, but due to the ineptitude of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã blog network, it hasn't appeared. When Jeremy was talking about the papers last night, he said of the independent's main story that 'battery fed chicken sales were down'
Battery fed chickens? They're a new one on me. Very amusing!!!
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I don't listen to lectures on environmental protection from people who own or drive motor cars. Get out of your vehicle and walk. You would then see the impractical nature of banning the ubiquitious plastic bag. I love 'em.
The Official Monster Raving Loony Party wants to introduce a 99p coin to save on change. Great idea.
Marks & Spencer plan to charge 5p per bag. It's interesting that they haven't considered a 1p or 2p charge. So let's scrap them both and call the present 5p coin 1p?
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Are you having Michael Scheuer on the show ? i hope so, he is the one of very few people who talks any kind of sense or truth RE the "war on terror", and has the guts to say our foreign policy is Bin Ladens "indispensable ally".
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Are you having Michael Scheuer on the show ? i hope so, he is the one of very few people who talks any kind of sense or truth RE the "war on terror", and has the guts to say our foreign policy is Bin Ladens "indispensable ally".
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Are you having Michael Scheuer on the show ? i hope so, he is the one of very few people who talks any kind of sense or truth RE the "war on terror", and has the guts to say our foreign policy is Bin Ladens "indispensable ally".
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French supermarkets stopped giving away plastic bags years ago. Shoppers take their own carriers with them without any problem. UK supermarkets should do the same.
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OUr grandparents never used plastic bags and I don't see that it is difficult for us either. I was given a bag for Christmas which rolls up into a tiny holder which I keep in my handbag together with a folded Waitrose bag for life that fits easily alongside my diary and takes no room at all. In Europe they have been charging for bags for several years and in Germany for much longer. Why can't we do the same or are we an inferior nation when it comes to admitting to our wasteful ways?
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who is that guy who decried the reduction of plastic bag usage? Even if we make some tiny reduction in our waste production it must help a little. However we could all shop in markets or traditional shops where there is less obligation to buy packaging and in so doing would reduce our personal impact on the environment.
But why isn't the government insisting on all new dwellings being built with solar energy whether for water heating or for electricity with photovoltaic cells? All run-off rain water could be collected for flushing down the loo. No domestic appliances should be sold if they are lower than a B on the energy saving scale.
There is a lot we could do individually but with a little encouragement from Westminster, probably more people would do more on a personal level.
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M&S in Ireland issue Paper bags with all Clothes purchases.
How is todays M&S initiative groundbreaking?
Surly M&S are just playing lip-service to the Plan A "Green" initiative. If they can offer us paper this side of the water, why not in their home stores?
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Kirsty
Re M and S selling bottled water ?
How little you know about the real world.
I have cancer and have to undergo Chemo therapy the side effects are that you become very dehydrated but I don't expect you to know that.
My first Chemo treatment we had a burst water main in my area and had no water for 12 hours from early evening.
Without Marks and Spencers water at 50p a litre and a half which is an amazing small cost I would have not survived the first Chemo session.
Don't judge on issues unless you research the full facts.
No doubt this will not be posted 502 error will appear yet again.
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What on earth was George Monbiot banging on about? The US National Climatic Data Center has recently revealed that the average temperature of the global land surface in January 2008 was below the 20th century mean (-0.02°F/-0.01°C) for the first time since 1982.
Why is he allowed to spout such drivel unchallenged?
Kirtsy sits there churning out questions about worrying for our kids. Yes, Kirsty, but it won't be non-existent 'global warming' that gets them.
It's the fact that they're being railroaded into losing all their freedoms and going down the path of dhimmitude that threatens our kids only Newsnight doesn't have the gumption to deal head on with Islamist ambitions to convert the world.
Let's just talk some drivel about plastic bags. Yes, we'll all save them and then we'll do what Ireland has done - go back to throwing them. I do save my plastic bags myself already but as Rod Liddle pointed out, it's not worth anything in the big picture.
Meanwhile, back to work on the tube tomorrow praying I won't get blown to pieces. Not that Newsnight will care, so long any severed limbs I get don't get carried off the tube with me in plastic bags.
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The programme totally missed the point of reducing the use of plastic bags- noone is arguing that reducing plastic bag use has any significant impact on carbon emissions- the main issue with plastic bags is the damage that they do to the environment, both visually, and in a very real way towards wildlife, particularly marine wildlife. The interviewees chosen were completely inappropriate- they should have tried to get Rebecca Hoskins on (the wildlife camerawoman who inspired the plastic bag ban in Modbury) or someone from Friends of the Earth of Marine Conservation Society....
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Maybe M&S will come into line with advanced countries such as India, who make and use imaginative and inexpensive cotton bags. Hardly 'radical' as their spokesman would have it. It's not just food, it's overpriced fetishized food, wrapped like an ipod.
Bless Rod Little getting into reading Slavoj Zizek, but once you remove the intellectual clothing, it's just another argument for intransigence. While the media may pick out small symbolic targets, in the end we all need to act on these 'small things' to cut emissions. Read the science Rod, it's not just another 'narrative'.
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How little we need to be asked to give up or use less of to make us anxious, angry, resentful etc.
Is this what was meant by stuff about camels, rich men and eyes of needles? Anyone objecting to the wasteful quality of modern life is seen as a sanctimonious bore but a side effect of frugality can be inventiveness and creativity, neither of which is boring.
If all we're about is to practise self-indulgence till we destroy ourselves it all seems rather pointless.
Funnily, plastic bags at the beginning were liked because they could be re-used and didn't disintegrate in the rain like paper carriers.
Perhaps there needs to be a reward (other than merely saving money) for reducing use of natural resources. Perhaps, we could see if the value of more careful use of fuels could be demonstrated much as levels of national savings during the war were shown as a thermometer with rising mercury.
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Yesterday, at the height of the Daily Mail/M&S 5p bag frenzy, I popped into a LIDL, a store proudly pointing out it was tackling the scourge of the bag by charging for them.
And, in a telling example of personal shopping choice I made a purchase: a cutter set.
Now how much was my decision based on the fact that I could see all the blades I would use? Hence the box in which they were contained was splayed open, and then popped in a blister pack.
Totally, and I don't fling this word about lightly, unnecessary. But certainly it, and my actions in being seduced (would a poster or image on the lid have worked to attract me as well?), are pretty much key to the whole issue.
While some small 'victories' may be scored in trying to cut down on waste and our addiction to buying more and more 'stuff', this little war on plastic bags rather conceals the fact that the last thing these noble manufacturers and retailers, and the media industry who serves them, want us to do is buy any less.
Hence we get bought off (ironically by paying more) with a bag levy, and perhaps get distracted from pondering any more about what we are buying in the first place.
Here's the latest press release that has popped into my in-box: 'IKEA SAVES 100 MILLION PLASTIC BAGS SINCE 2006 In support of the Daily Mail's campaign to ban the use of all single-use disposable plastic bags, IKEA UK today announced that a total of 100 million plastic bags have been saved since first launching a 10p charge in June 2006 and then a complete phasing out of plastic bags in July 2007. '
I must say I stumbled over 'today announcing' something they have been doing for a while, which just shows what the impact of the weight of the Daily Mail readership and M&S PR machine is; all sorts of guys are tripping overthemselves to be first to be second to tell people they were first. Hardly edifying.
And I still don't see how a 10p bag doesn't choke a turtle any more than a 5p one.
At least the reduction statistic shows the potential value of this campaign, even though I think it has been orchestrated by the wrong folk in the wrong way for mostly all the wrong reasons. But maybe the end (still unsure on the impact of the alternatives being scattered about) result could yet be worth it. Maybe a few eggs need to be broken for this omelette.
But let's now see who they turn their sights on next, and in what way the mob is directed. Just so long as the enviROI ends up positive, and it's all not just for show and ratings and a short term feel-good for the chattering classes, at the expense of those less able to cope with impositions and costs.... or even the planet.
I just wonder how long the likes of the Daily Mail or M& S will stay true to the overall cause, though both look like riding a hell of a decent wave for now.
But I rather suspect that even if Al Gore invented a $100 wind turbine, if GM offered a free Humvee to every reader or BA a free flight to Hawaii, the paper's front page would look a tad different. And even if editorial did move on to the 'necessity' of cut flowers and New Zealand lamb (ignoring the debate that the carbon consequence of their rearing cancels out the food miles in the shipping vs. buying local), the ad department may have a few words to offer via their client feedback.
Interesting times. What we really need is more positives that serve the consumer process AND the environment.
Sadly, I could only open that pack by destroying it. So no reuse ideas there. I will walk it round the plastics skip, but have litte faith that it will be recycled effectively. Which, at about the equivalent of 50 plastic bags in one shot, is the real concern I have.
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There are really two sides to the plastics bags debate - energy use and litter.
Plastics bags - especially the very thin single use ones - are actually very good from an energy use perspective and if collected, reused and recycled provide a more environmentally acceptable than many other alternatives - including some multi-use alternatives.
I keep hearing that they will last 1,000 years - that's ridiculous. Polyethylene bags were introduced to consumers in the 1940s-50s (when they were washed and re-used because they were so costly) and I don't know of any still in existance. They split and disintegrate until there is nothing left - in fact manufacturers have to add stabilisers to stop this process.
However, if they are discarded in the street they will hang around for quite a long time. This is one of the main reasons that they have been banned in India and China - in less developed societies they are a huge litter problem.
But rather than banning the bag we should as a society take more interest in our waste in general. Plastics bags are all made from the same type of plastic and can be easily recycled and used again - if they are collected. That allows us to really maximise the energy investment we have made in the material.
Even so, in environmental terms, plastics bags are just the very tip of the iceberg.
That's not to say we should not consider what we can do in that area but as a society we seem to be putting all our efforts into addressing less than 0.1% of our problem.
That really seems to be the wrong way around. Aircraft travel, domestic and business energy consumption, road transport - fractional improvements in these areas will have much more impact on carbon emissions.
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During last nights show the m&s representative, sed that it would be far to expensive to the consumer to start a cotton carrier bag incentive, however The Co-operative, where i am an employee, they already have these bags on sale. They are 100% Fairtade cotton carrier bags, RRP 99p and they do sell, quite well actually. They are much more dureable than plastic bags, and they are washable, and fold up to fit into your pocket. However i must admit though, the Co-operative still hands out plastic carrier bags, but they are biodegradable.
It seems to me that M&S are simply jumping on the 'green' band-wagon here, they want to seem as though there being green but there are so many other factors. There fruit and veg is wrapped up, yet the co-operative recently launched the 'naked cucumber' iniciative, where cucumbers no longer come wrapped up in shrink wrap. In their eco stores they use the excess heat from fridges, to power the store so as to reduce the amount of wasted energy. Has M&S done this or anything similar? Im not saying the Co-operative is completly eco-friendly but at least they are trying out new things to reduce their carbon footprint.
Another thing they do aswell is display their fruit and veg, in plastic containers, which they are delivered to the store in. Therefore reducing the amount of cardboard used and wasted, although any cardboard or polythene is recycled.
Its alright for M&S to say their turning green, but are they really? Will charging 5p really make a difference? Or are they taking advantage of the fact, that people often forget to bring their old carrier bags and therefore would need to pay for them in order to carry their shopping? As it was said on last nights show the little changes dont work on there own they need to be supported by making bigger 'green' changes.
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