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New Zealand bans plastic bags for fresh produce in supermarkets
(www.bbc.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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Compostable plastic bags are only a few cents more expensive than the shit ones, no reason why every supermarket in the country can’t convert over.
Kind of funny. When I was a kid, people would be asked, "Paper or plastic?" and encouraged to use plastic as it "saved the rainforests"
We've come full circle
Plastic definitely had a pretty good PR team in the beginning there. “Don’t use metal cans, the chemicals the leach into water kills fish”. “Switch to plastic drink bottles, glass is dangerous to wildlife if it ends up in the ocean”
Never heard those. The ones I would hear are. It takes a bajillion pounds of fossil fuels to make one can. Glass will just randomly explode into a shower of splinters that will definitely get into all the children's feet with no warning whatsoever.
Obviously plastic causes a whole bunch of other problems but using it for bags literally does save the rainforests in a roundabout sort of way.
Corporations being corporations, very few are going to spend the extra money to offer you FSC certified paper bags sourced from a well managed, renewable plantation. They are going to buy the absolute cheapest product available that they can slap their logo on.
The inevitable consequence of that choice is that those bags likely come from a country with little to no regulation of their forest industry. In all likelihood those ultra cheap bags are either a) made from irreplaceable old growth forest that was then burned to cinders and turned into a palm oil plantation.
Or b) made from low grade timber imported from the other side of the planet. When this timber arrives, it and everything else in the hold are completely and utterly black with mould. All good though, you can just blast it with a mixture of industrial bleach and a cornucopia of the harshest chemicals imaginable before draining and allowing that entire slurry to wash into the river, which then flows to the ocean.
Now you can make paper!
Even where I live in Australia, we've rapidly shut down sustainable state forest logging for hardwood. These decisions were made on emotion, but essentially out of a desire to do good. It's just unfortunate that the people making that series of decisions doesn't really understand the consequences of their actions.
We do not have anywhere near the amount of sustainable plantation required to service the needs of our local paper making industry. Further still, you can't make quality paper out of plantation pine alone: you need hardwood.
There's massive investment into hardwood plantation timber over the next few years. Unfortunately we are looking at 30 years of buying our bags from countries where there are no standards, and no hesitation to pump chemical slurry into the ocean or cut down old growth forest to make shopping bags.
So yeah, I'll take the plastic thanks. I'll re-use it as a bin liner before it goes to landfill but at least it isn't burning sludge diesel in TWO directions as the ingredients are shipped around the world and it didn't pour a thousand litres of filth into the ocean or tear down an old growth forest.
I think it could depend a lot where you are. I just took a look at my own paper bag from Trader Joe's in CA. I looked up the company that produced it, it seems like they're using 3rd party sourcing certification and source their pulp domestically. Also 40% of the bag is recycled. I'd love to be proven wrong but it seems like it's a lot better than plastic to me.
Oh without a doubt. I have no idea what sort of store trader joe's is, but I'd imagine whole foods stores and others who want to look like they give a fuck would do their due diligence on the supply chain. In which case absolutely paper is better than plastic! It's renewable and doesn't stick around forever.
And speaking as a kiwi, we produce very little for ourselves. Most of our production is immediately sent overseas for better prices... This is double-bad because we're so damn isolated.
I've sat amongst policy wonks trying to raise the profitability if the country and had them joking that if we could just move across the equator closer into Asia, it would all be so much easier...
My point is, the carbon miles on everything makes it awful. Sure consumers and supermarkets are changing (after legislation, certainly not before!), but the whole playing field is based around the convenience of the shipping container and it's absolutely unsustainable.