pretty piss poor effort by the supermarkets and more so regulation,
coles and Woolworths, are still supplying a thicker tougher longer lasting plastic bags, @ 15 cents, most people wouldn't bat an eyelid at paying 3 dollars for 20 bags in a $300 shopping bill,
I've been using the same French Eco sack from French supermarkets Champion, Le Clerc, Carrefour, for 13 / 14 years, we did a little research a couple of weeks ago, Coles packed or standard weeks shop in 28 plastic bags, on top of that everything else that's wrapped in pvc and poly based products

Thoughts and solutions

That's where I worry about the media and public opinion. All these people chiming in about 'ban the bag', without thinking it through or researching it.

There was a program on ABC or SBS a few months ago where they called out that the rules meant no more one-use bags which just resulted in the same number of bags, just thicker in plastic so that they are no longer 'one-use'. Even though you know they will only be used once.

I think the only real solution to the problem is to have an organic/readily dissoluble bag. People like me don't take bags to the supermarket, and I use them for bin bags anyway. I don't know if that would ever change as I would just buy bin bags anyway.

The same program threw a few GPS trackers into plastic bag recycling bins and tracked where they went to. I think they ended up in Qld, and I can't remember the ultimate end of the bags, but it may have been unknown or more land-fill.

As yet there is no viable biodegradable plastic bags. The current grey ones are degradable , meaning they break up into pieces but the plastic remains.

Twenty years ago I was involved in industry packaging recycling program....it was proposed that plastic had a 10% environmental levy imposed on it to fund recycling/ clean up etc .....but it was killed of by higher powers!

While I think the shopping bags a a blight on the environment, I don't think it will necessarily make a huge difference , most people use shopping bags as bin liners. Now they will buy brand new bin liners, so roughly the same amount of plastic will go into landfill.

The real problem has always been and will continue to be littering and improper disposal...this is how the plastic ends up in the sea etc.
Fines and better disposal systems would make a difference.

Hemp
problem solved

I've been looking for same and googled yours cauncy but couldn't find. If anyone has some recommendations please post

I've just picked up a couple of scout fundraiser shopping bags. Rubbish So cheaply made, will need fixing/replacing well before Christmas.

I think its a token effort.

They needed to ban excess packaging first. Fruit n veg in little plastic boxes is dumb, and stopping that would not inconvenience anyone.

Then, agree totally with the above posters - making thicker bags instead? duhh....

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myusernam said..
I've been looking for same and googled yours cauncy but couldn't find. If anyone has some recommendations please post

From memory these were free and have lasted 13/14 years, saving a ridiculous amount of plastic bags, crew on the checkouts love them as they can fill them up , there's so many better options available than plastic bags

These are the same apart from design, look at the cost,
f all but if you were charged $2 each you'd be sure to re use them

Another option
pay a deposit on these
woolies fill them up as per picture( this is bollocks as they have 3/4 plastic bags per box inside) when delivered you hand them yours for a 1 for one exchange, when you go shopping you put your stuff inside them , when empty they take up little room as they interfit into each other
These huge corporations don't give a flying f..k about the environment, its cost limitation and max profit

She looks happy with the size of bananas??

Paper brown bags did the job really well when I was a kid.

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novetti said..
Paper brown bags did the job really well when I was a kid.

Coles sell a really strong hessian bag which i've been using for the last year.

I say ban all plastic bags and single use drinking containers completely - not just shopping.

There's hessian, recycled paper, hemp.....basically humans are generally lazy and cheap when it comes to thinking about the environment. If it's too hard or it costs a few cents more, out come the whingers.

Sounds like the marketers have looked at the list of Woolies environmental and social impacts.

Started at the top and worked down. From most important to least.

They glanced over Woolies being the biggest Poker machine owner in Australia sucking 2 billion dollars from families.

The marketers skipped over how their tight requirements on their fresh food suppliers results in huge amounts of unnecessary waste.

Down the list to number 46: Single use plastic bags.

That's it!

The Marketers pitch their findings at the 'Woolies - actively saving the World' board meeting:

"This is Perfect. Its easy to implement. We"ll put the environmental guilt and cost onto the customer."

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rockmagnet said..

novetti said..
Paper brown bags did the job really well when I was a kid.

Coles sell a really strong hessian bag which i've been using for the last year.

Is it real hessian or just a look alike plastic?
I see Woolies have a "canvas" bag for $3 but I've not had a close look at it.

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Mr Milk said..

rockmagnet said..

novetti said..
Paper brown bags did the job really well when I was a kid.

Coles sell a really strong hessian bag which i've been using for the last year.

Is it real hessian or just a look alike plastic?
I see Woolies have a "canvas" bag for $3 but I've not had a close look at it.

Dunno, haven't tasted it. But it's made from Jute which is a vegetable matter.

What I find most offensive is Coles' ad on telly last night about their $50mil fund to help farmers with projects or futuristic stuff.

Full of cheesy grins from Curtis Stone, smiling farmers (if they are real farmers) and statements about how good Coles is.

Hang on, so the big two supermarkets drove down wholesale and farm gate prices, over many years forcing farmers to take less and less for their produce. The farmers had to near on go broke as if you can't sell to Coles and Woolies you're buggered- IGA can't buy all of it.....

Then they claim to be so bloody philanthropic...... we love farmers and we are helping them come up with good ideas.... kumbayahhhhh

Anyway back on track,agree with Adriano too. I say also ban bottled water

It seems that single-use plastic bags aren't really as bad for the environment when compared to a lot of the alternatives anyway:

www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/plastic-bag-ban-many-alternatives-have-huge-environmental-footprints/news-story/2ea67901345f07b6515bcb71e20c708f

"The benefits of a reusable bag are highly sensitive to the number of times each bag is used during its life," said the report. "For example, if a reusable PP green bag is only used 52 times (weekly for a year) instead of the assumed 104 times (weekly for two years) then its impact on global warming is higher than the impact of each of the single-use bags except the paper bag."

So, even paper bags use more resources than the current single-use bags, and paper-bags aren't that good anyway.

Its good that popular opinion has given us something that's actually worse!

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Mark _australia said..
What I find most offensive is Coles' ad on telly last night about their $50mil fund to help farmers with projects or futuristic stuff.

Full of cheesy grins from Curtis Stone, smiling farmers (if they are real farmers) and statements about how good Coles is.

Hang on, so the big two supermarkets drove down wholesale and farm gate prices, over many years forcing farmers to take less and less for their produce. The farmers had to near on go broke as if you can't sell to Coles and Woolies you're buggered- IGA can't buy all of it.....

Then they claim to be so bloody philanthropic...... we love farmers and we are helping them come up with good ideas.... kumbayahhhhh

Anyway back on track,agree with Adriano too. I say also ban bottled water

Yeah, its very much a double standard.

I tend to buy from IGA, just because its more convenient for me, but sometimes it shows up the obvious differences in what the supermarkets are demanding from the suppliers. A flavoured yoghurt at IGA can be $7.50 while the same product is $5 all the time at Coles. I suspect that it is the supplier taking a bath on the profit and not Coles.

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FormulaNova said..
It seems that single-use plastic bags aren't really as bad for the environment when compared to a lot of the alternatives anyway:

www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/plastic-bag-ban-many-alternatives-have-huge-environmental-footprints/news-story/2ea67901345f07b6515bcb71e20c708f

"The benefits of a reusable bag are highly sensitive to the number of times each bag is used during its life," said the report. "For example, if a reusable PP green bag is only used 52 times (weekly for a year) instead of the assumed 104 times (weekly for two years) then its impact on global warming is higher than the impact of each of the single-use bags except the paper bag."

So, even paper bags use more resources than the current single-use bags, and paper-bags aren't that good anyway.

Its good that popular opinion has given us something that's actually worse!

The point of getting rid of single use bags isn't about reducing resource use. It is to reduce the amount of plastics ending up in waterways and the ocean. Years ago, I looked down at the water from a headland and thought, "jeeesus, those are some big jellies down there". Then I realised I was looking at white/ translucent shopping bags that were in the water. Fish, birds, turtles and aquatic mammals have the same misperception and swallow them. The aim of the bag ban is to save their lives

Saw on TV last night Woolworths will save 90 million by not supplying plastic bags. Then they are scheduled to make 30 million selling their own new "plastic" bags. They are not doing it for the environment .

Time to turn all my unusable kites into re-usable shopping bags.

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FormulaNova said..
It seems that single-use plastic bags aren't really as bad for the environment when compared to a lot of the alternatives anyway:

www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/plastic-bag-ban-many-alternatives-have-huge-environmental-footprints/news-story/2ea67901345f07b6515bcb71e20c708f

"The benefits of a reusable bag are highly sensitive to the number of times each bag is used during its life," said the report. "For example, if a reusable PP green bag is only used 52 times (weekly for a year) instead of the assumed 104 times (weekly for two years) then its impact on global warming is higher than the impact of each of the single-use bags except the paper bag."

So, even paper bags use more resources than the current single-use bags, and paper-bags aren't that good anyway.

Its good that popular opinion has given us something that's actually worse!

What's so hard about using a paper bag four times?

The report also ignores the other natural fibre bags with a far lower carbon and environmental footprint, like hemp for example, which would last hundreds of uses.

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Elroy Jetson said..
They glanced over Woolies being the biggest Poker machine owner in Australia sucking 2 billion dollars from families.

Who love Pokies more than Woolies is the government from the tax revenue it generates.

The equation is simple - Goverment hands out 1 AUD via centrelink who will be spent on pokies, and recovers 45c via taxes to the gambling operator.
Keep the herd satisfied via their gambling hit, claim money back.
Its the government ''Negative gearing'' sort of.

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Gazuki said..
Saw on TV last night Woolworths will save 90 million by not supplying plastic bags. Then they are scheduled to make 30 million selling their own new "plastic" bags. They are not doing it for the environment .

So previously they had a 90 million dollar 'expense' which would reduce their tax payable.
Now they've had a 120 million turnaround so woollies make more money, the federal govt makes more from company tax and the states get an extra 3 million from gst...
We've been conned again

We never pay "full price" for items that require recycling here in Australia and it's bullsh!t. If the price paid for a plastic bag included the cost of ethically/properly recycling it then Woolworths would be giving some of that $30m back to the government to be passed back to a recycling operation.

For example, does anyone actually believe that the "disposal fee" for a used car tyre can actually cover the cost of its proper disposal? It will cover the cost of baling the tyre up and shipping it offshore for what is usually unethical disposal, but there's no way it can cover the cost of proper recycling here in Australia. We've just had a bit of a crisis here in QLD where Ipswich Council were staring down the barrel of having to put their recycling bins into the land fill because China stopped accepting their recyclables and the Council didn't have the balls to up the rates to cover a "proper" recycling operation. Recycling is a political time bomb because no-one is paying full price for it now, and no politician wants to be the one that makes us pay for it.

So the council's wearing the cost for now?

That's a good question Adriano, and I don't know the answer but I'll do some digging. Ipswich Council were in the press saying they were in crisis and going to suspend kerbside recycling because they couldn't afford the additional cost after their contractor's Chinese buyers stopped buying. Then within weeks recycling was happening again so I don't know who stepped in to cover the costs, or buy the recyclables, someone must have found some money or a buyer somewhere I guess. Hopefully not being just dumped in a hole in the ground somewhere else.

I saw it as being the ratepayers of the Ipswich Council area lulled into thinking that their Council had a responsible recycling contractor when they were just ending it overseas. This is great while there's demand for the material but it's a disaster if the overseas buyer stops buying it. The government just aren't doing enough to make recycling viable here in Australia, the costs ultimately have to passed back to the consumers/community and no politician wants to be the one imposing a new cost on the voters.

www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-20/ipswich-council-backflips-on-dumping-recycling/9681682

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Gazuki said..
Saw on TV last night Woolworths will save 90 million by not supplying plastic bags. Then they are scheduled to make 30 million selling their own new "plastic" bags. They are not doing it for the environment .

And the sale of bin liner bags skyrockets. I note we have them in our cupboard now, weren't there before. Win, win for Coles and Woolies, and any backlash can be blamed on Government regulations.

I actually agree with plastic bags not being made available for free because no-one gives a sh!t about something they don't pay for. For instance, here in Beachmere our local IGA got rid of single use plastic bags months ago when their last supply of them ran out. We are only a small community and we all swore a bit at first when we forgot to take our bags to the shops, but now we're mostly "trained" and we leave re-usable shopping bags in our cars or ride the pushy to the shops and use a backpack. The old single use plastic bags are now a "hot commodity" as rubbish bags here, nobody wastes them any more because suddenly they have a value. I love it, it's a green economic experiment that seems to be working.

My beef is that these policies are hiding the real "skeleton in the closet", Australia's recycling system is totalled because government have been too scared to make all of us consumers pay the "real" price for packaging as it's been easy to just ship our rubbish offshore to make it someone else's problem. This "real" price is the "whole of life" price from manufacture to recycling/repurposing and sometime soon we are going to have to start paying the full price or we're going to have a mess on our hands.

www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-03-03/recycling-industry-in-crisis-can-it-be-fixed/9502512

^ Same attitude with coal power and land clearing in QLD. It will be someone else's problem in the future.

It also reminds me of the attitude of pro-nuclear power advocates, who never factor in the waste management and plant decommissioning costs in 40 years time.

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Mr Milk said..


The point of getting rid of single use bags isn't about reducing resource use. It is to reduce the amount of plastics ending up in waterways and the ocean. Years ago, I looked down at the water from a headland and thought, "jeeesus, those are some big jellies down there". Then I realised I was looking at white/ translucent shopping bags that were in the water. Fish, birds, turtles and aquatic mammals have the same misperception and swallow them. The aim of the bag ban is to save their lives

I agree with you, but since I took up windsurfing about 17 years ago, and seen a lot of the rubbish floating in the water (back when I was slow enough to take notice of this...), I couldn't help but thinking that most of the rubbish is coming from boaties. Bait bags and chip bags, and all sorts of things you would expect people consuming on a boat, and then dropping overboard.

I end up with heaps of single use bags from my shopping, and use a lot of them for rubbish bags. Eventually though I have too many and throw them out, but even then I ball them up and put them in one that already has my rubbish in it. So, short of the rubbish guys opening up my carefully packed rubbish, I don't think any of them would end up anywhere except the dump.

That said, some of my neighbours obviously don't tie up their rubbish in bin bags as there seem to be packets of things I have never bought that end up getting blown into my yard after the bins are collected. I would argue that those same people are going to do exactly the same thing forever and rubbish will go astray when their bins are emptied. Plastic bag policies are not going to do anything to stop their rubbish.