Paper or "plastic?" Looks like "plastic" may going obsolete soon? Your thoughts?

Question

Sun Jun 1, 7:07 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Sunday became the latest country to declare war on plastic bags in a drive to save energy and protect the environment.

Under new regulations, flimsy bags under 0.025 millimeters thick are banned and shopkeepers must charge for carrier bags. Those found breaking the law face fines and could have their goods confiscated.

Shoppers in downtown Beijing and in Internet chatrooms seemed largely sympathetic to the idea. China, which gets through three billion plastic bags a day, is increasingly aware of the damage to the environment caused by its breakneck growth.

"Sorry, I can't give you a plastic bag. It's illegal from today," said one young woman, Zhang Lihua, who was selling cosmetics in a department store in the capital.

China, which consumes 37 million barrels of crude oil each year to manufacture more than one trillion plastic bags, is following in the footsteps of countries such as Ireland, Rwanda and Bangladesh. Italy is due to introduce a ban by 2010.

"To protect the environment, they shouldn't provide plastic bags," said one Internet posting on sina.com. "As time goes on, people will get into the habit of carrying their own bags when they go shopping."

Sceptics say the fate of the initiative will depend on how diligent police and inspectors are in enforcing the law.

"Is there a ban on plastic bags?" asked a man in a cake shop. "I didn't know. Anyway, maybe it'll take effect next month. I'm sure no one is going to enforce that today."

Ultra-thin bags are the main target of the crackdown because they are typically used once and then thrown away, littering streets, fields and streams and creating what the Chinese call "white pollution."

Chen Wei, a seller of steamed bread buns in central Beijing, was still using ultra-thin bags on Sunday.

"When I've used them all up, I'll stop. Then my customers will have to bring their own bags, or I will charge them two mao ($0.03) or so for a bag," Chen said.

Answer 1

I have reusable sacs that I keep in my car for when I go shopping.  I take them in with me and use them instead of a cart when I can, that way I don't buy too much, and I know I'll be able to carry it home.  It's good discipline practice for more than one reason, and it saves the world of needless waste.  I'm trying : )

Answer 2

At our house it's paper or reusable bags.  I do take the small plastic bags from the park to use for the dog on our walks, but we're installing a doggie doo composter of sorts so hopefully we'll be able to forego the plastic bags even there as soon as we can get down 4 feet!

Some of the newer "plastic" bags are biodegradable, under certain conditions.  But this is a stopgap solution, at best.

Answer 3

Fantastic Idea

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And it took China to do it not any of the rest of the world

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And how much does it cost us to buy one of those bags that all the  stores are selling to take home our stuff in and how many people have brought any

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we have

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And we do have to remember when the crude oil is gone it is gone for good there is only so much of it the earth has in it

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Answer 4

We still use plastic. Okay I know it is not "green". But honestly, Carrying meats in a paper grocery bag is a sure fire way for it to end up on the ground.

Plastic bags can be reused. We use them for the small trash receptacles at our offices and at home.

Answer 5

I wish this was a simple question! I have just spent a good long while investigating and researching this topic and this entire subject is a muddled mess. On this environmental question perhaps one should first consider the old adage that doctors apply; "First do no harm".

   First to be honest; I am very concerned about global warming and the environment. I will start with my conclusion on this issue and that is that "perhaps" an individual would be wise to begin using cloth bags for shopping for all items except food items.That covers environmental concerns and health issues of cross contamination caused by cloth absorbing food borne organisms.Put food in plastic bags only or one use paper that can be recycled.

    As to banning plastic bags altogether, that could be disasterous for the environment unless uses of oil were first banned as a fuel basis for vehicles. Oil refineries process oil for gasoline and diesel as well as a variety of other chemical uses.One of these other uses is plastics and plastic bags. If the chemical that makes plastic bags is not used for plastic bags then it will be discarded as burnoff and then all of that material will instantly add a huge amount of CO2 to the other greenhouse gases that are already in the air. Every minute of operation of a major oil refinery already burns off more CO2 than I will use in my entire lifetime. These waste burnoffs are taking a terrible toll on the environment, we can not afford to add more burnoffs. The oil industries are already not building new refineries because they don't want to have to meet the new standards that a new refinery would require. TERRIBLE!!! They are adding more pollution just for greed and profit, no surprise there, but seems criminal to me.

    At least if the chemicals that make plastic bags are not burned then the CO2 is "locked" up in the plastic for centuries and does not immediately effect the environment, hopefully by the time they do degrade we will have turned to cleaner technologies and the slow impact will not be as great then, first we need to survive to get to that point, and the heated globe is already begining to create strange weather patterns and devastating storms. We really can-not afford to immediately cause a sudden spike in CO2 production.

   This is very complicated, there are new "biodegradable plastics", however they produce CO2 as they degrade and so again we have the problems of increased CO2 being released into the environment at a rapid rate. One of the promotion lines of these new plastics is that they will likely be burried in a landfill or recycled. "If burried in a landfill then the CO2 released will attach itself to other molecules and not enter the air", however they don't mention that almost all CO2 released by degrading materials can become attached to other molecules underground, however in a landfill full saturation of molecules with Carbon happens rather rapidly and then there is no where for the CO2 to go except into the air unless the fill is "capped", ironically this cap is often made of heavy plastics. Eventually the gases do escape anyhow, although there is also the danger of underground fires.

    In all my research on this matter there have been all kinds of political and industrial hype and the facts are often the victim. I will leave one link that is related to biodegradable plastics, however most of the time they do treat the issue with some little bias.It is a rather large pdf file, and it may take quite a while to load, and must be read as an entirety as they raise pros and cons to most of the issues concerning this, so they start out seeming to go one direction and then they go in another. If you only read a few of the paragraphs at the start you will get the wrong impression. I include this as it hits on a lot of topics that are rarely addressed and need to be, before we make a mistake and make things a lot worse, rapidly. Link below in source area.Note this source is not from within the US. It was created mainly by scientists in the UK.I have had some snags trying to open the pdf online and so it may be best to "right click and save as;".It is easier to read on your desktop then.

Answer 6

I think even a small charge for plastic bags is a great incentive to bring your own bags to the market.  I always bring my own bags when I shop, thus feeling more in control and positive about my ecological footprint. I was at the market the other day and winced when I saw how many bags this one woman had in her cart.  

I also think that maybe they should retrain bag clerks to try to use as much of the bagging space as possible before starting a new bag (Target in particular).

I loved the article, thanks for sharing!