Goodbuy Plastic Bags?

Embodying Jamie Oliver I decided to make my own dinner this weekday and go against the takeaway culture of the UAE.

Items finally found in the vast wasteland of a hypermarket, I disposed of them at the cash counter and prepared myself to complain about the increasing price of food. Having just four items the cashier started bagging them in a plastic bag so thick I could of used it as a parachute.  Proudly I said ‘no,’ already feeling the pats on my back from Greenpeace and jolly polar bear.  With the balance of a circus elephant I juggled my way to my car and of course proceeded to turn my crisp white shirt to a shade of soy sauce brown. I think a takeout sounds good now.

Plastic bags ladies and gentlemen are a plight on this planet. Yet every so often you need one. It is the conundrum that faces the modern, evermore eco-friendly world – should there be a total ban on plastic bags?

Single Use Plastic Bags?

Absolutely.  Whatever the makers of ‘modern’ plastic bags say – they do not biodegrade. Infact they photodegrade – a process of breaking down to smaller toxic particles. On land this is bad as they have a nasty habit of ending up in the soil the animals we eat, eat. In the open seas however, it is twice as harmful.

1000 years people. The time it takes 1 of the trillion or so plastic bags produced per year to fully degrade.

Recyclable Plastic Bags?

Not for much longer! Plastic bags have a nasty habit of clogging up big recycling equipment meaning local councils don't want them. The result – just 5% of plastic bags actually are recycled.

The alternative was to send these nasties to countries that would recycle them. China (the biggest recycling outsourcer) unfortunately has recently banned receiving overseas recyclable waste meaning a build up in your home country. Long story short - the end up in landfills.  

Bio-degradable bags?

Hmm the jury is out on this one. Yes plastic bags claimed to be ‘bio-degradable’ do infact destruct in 3 years compared to the centuries of naughty regular bags. But (and it's a big, full bodied but) like plastic bottles they need to have exactly the right conditions to do so. Live in a humid country – no good. Cold weather – not happening. Landfills – not enough sun and oxygen!

Oh and these bags contain a cocktail of metals such as lead & cobalt (the stuff terminators will be made of and just as dangerous to us humans).

Just Ban them?

Possibly. The capital city of Kenya, Nairobi seems to think so. On 28th August 2017 the government placed a total ban on plastic bags with extreme fines or even jail time for those caught using or making anymore.

Europe has a watered down version of this with each plastic bag chargeable in the effort to remove the attractiveness of a polymer container. But surely why should us the consumer have to suffer the cost when the factories are at fault?

Truth is plastic is a plague on planet earth. Things get caught up in them, stuff we eat inadvertently eats it, they promote a single-use and throw lifestyle and refuse to disappear when disposed of.  

We hear of companies that will convert old plastic bags into floor tiles, roads & furniture in an effort to Up Cycle pre-existing rubbish. Surely the question has to be asked as to why new or even bio-degradable bags even need to be made with so many littering our blue planet?

Short term then the message should be to REuse (not REcycle into new) and long term, REmove. 

Global Green Foods aims to only use bio-degrable (non-plastic) packaging in all its products by 2019. Setting the gold standard for all companies in the region.