Quote:
Originally Posted by Ratmick
There's plenty of plastic bags in both pics mate, put your glasses on 
...I can't tell how many times they have been used though.
Bags are a part of the problem and a very visible one, so an easy one to start with.
We've been using multi-use bags for our weekly grocery shop for years so no great drama in my case, although I do need to remember to take one in whenever I go in during the week for more than one item as buying a new bag every time I am in there will lose its allure when we're replaced all our old ratty Woolies and Coles freezer bags as the ones I buy have zips.
The main issue is all plastics, I spent a day on St Kilda beach dodging used syringes picking up rubbish last year and the main culprits (apart from syringes) were cigarette butts, drink bottle tops, old cigarette lighters, plastic spoons/straws and countless small plastic nurdles that had escaped from a plastics factory somewhere up the Yarra that hadn't made it further than the beach. The nurdles are about the size of a lentil, or smaller. The issue with these is that they're eaten by things that are eaten by things that eat them. It kills them by blocking their gut plus they slowly release their constituent chemicals back into the water.
Rather than poking holes in various government's attempts to do something, rather than nothing (or just poking holes in arguments) you don't think it'd be better to do something rather than nothing? They may not have a perfect solution apart form wiping the earth of all human life, but there needs to be more thought put into things apart from using the oceans as a dumping ground for all the stuff we don't want.
FWIW though the main issue is not household rubbish, it's industrial.
...tackling single-use household bags makes for easier point scoring for Pollies though |
I am sick of govmints treating us like idiots and banning stuff that has no effect except to give them the high moral ground.
It is all about gesture politics that means nothing, achieves nothing and I have yet to meet someone who agrees that we should keep using single use plastic bags.
The reason I suspect is that people no longer think about what is happening. Add in a media that also has an agenda and we never have a proper debate on anything anymore where we exchange facts and logic to arrive at some point where all concerns are out in the open.
Are there any disadvantages in banning single use plastic bags?
Well how about this one ...
People will die.
Mention that to people and they just shrug.
That's right, they shrug.
Does this not mean that people care more about the environment and animals that they do about their fellow human beings.
A 2012 University of Pennsylvania study found San Francisco’s 2007 plastic bag ban killed people because reusable bags increased shoppers’ exposure to harmful bacteria that can infest them. “The San Francisco ban led to, conservatively, 5.4 annual additional deaths,” the authors concluded.
Don't believe me?
Here is the study
http://www.austincontrarian.com/file...-id2196481.pdf