Despite all the shoutout from many environmentalists to reduce plastic bags consumptions, are you seeing any different in common daily plastic use? how do this effect you? No? is it important? is it not important?

Plastic plays significant roles in our environment, social, as well as economical dimension. Plastics consumption has wide range in our life, from packaging, transport packaging, plastic bags, to components in cars, building materials, electronics, furniture and new technology. We (still) need plastics.

Now lets discuss about plastic bags and plastic bag bans

In public debate, plastic bag has a bad image due to irresponsible littering behavior in human societies. This littering caused health and pollution problems, especially in developing countries where the garbage and recycling systems are not getting a proper priority.

Is plastic degradable? it actually degrades very slowly over a long long time, thus generally it is non degradable. Since plastic is not degradable once ended in land or water, it will stay there, it will break to smaller pieces over a long time but it still remains. Thus irresponsible plastic littering is also seen as unnecessary waste and unsustainable use of plastic.

Lets see some facts on plastic production and recycling:

A. Production

*very roughly estimated, source: polystyrene producer* To produce 1kg plastic bag we need 2kg oil equivalent for material and energy use during production.

Global plastic production in year 2006 is about 245 million tones. (Plastic Europe Market Research Group, 2007)

Is there any significant oil-saving by banning plastic bags? Most plastic production uses oil as raw materials. Oil is non renewable. But…

Oil is mostly used for fuel (50%), heating (32%), electricity (8%), chemicals (10%). Global oil consumption for plastic production is about 5%. **

Five percent goes to plastic production! Overall plastic production, not only plastic bag production.

Meaning 5% of 245million tonnes is for plastic production include plastic packaging for food and drink, plastic packaging for transportation, plastic for electronic component, furniture, housing, tire production, etc.

And…, how many percent of this 5% accounts for plastic bags?

** Source: Leben und Umwelt mit Kunstoffen, BASF*

And…, how many percent of this 5% accounts for plastic bags?

The answer is: less than 2% of total global oil consumption!

B. Recycling

Most plastic bags are made of polyethylene. Plastic recycling in city/ urban areas has proven to be difficult. Different than glass, paper and metals, which are easier to process mechanically, it is often labor intensive and cost intensive (not cost effective) to sort plastic waste. For example, recycling Polystyrene is rarely cost effective. However the overall plastic recycling systems are problematic, not only of plastic bags, isn’t it?

Plastic recycling is improving and hopefully getting better and better. Many people confused down-cycling with real recycling. If we recycle plastic bottle into plastic trash bag, then it is down cycling. By real recycling a plastic bottle will be recycled into a new bottle. Many plastic bags are down-cycled products.

C. Vs Bioplastic and Vs Paper Bag

Of course each product is promoting its own benefits and goodness. There are always advantage and disadvantages of each product. Plastics are generally lighter than paper, thus easier and less costly to transport after production. Bioplastic bag is degrading much better than plastic bag, but it still costs a lot of energy on production. Paper production is one of the most polluting industries since it involves lots of chemicals and uses relatively a lot of water.

In developing countries like China and India there is a new emerging trend of banning plastic ban. According to thedailygreen.com, China will save millions barrels oil every year though plastic bag ban (1 barrel=159Ltr). However, there are many debates stating this ban goes flimsy as enforcement is not strong enough.

So what is the real problem with plastic bags? What is the solution?

Is it littering problem? then it is our awareness to be changed. Why making a ban on plastic bags when it turns to be flimsy enforcement anyway?

Million tons of oil is spilled on the sea, wildlife is getting endangered-extinct due to illegal handlings and habitat destruction, while countries developing nuclear power, CO2 biggest contributors are still smoking our earth. These are our other challenges.

There are millions of plastic produced each year. If plastic bag littering is the problem, we should work on the awareness problems. Banning plastic bag without strong law enforcement does not bring a lot. In China there is plastic bag ban since 2007, but people are still using plastic bags due to lack of enforcement.The root of the problem is not plastic bag by itself. Is banning littering perhaps a better solution than banning plastic bag?

Banning plastic bag, which will urge the use of other material such as paper, or bio plastic will lead to another environmental problems.

It would be better to increase overall environmental awareness by doing the following things instead of focusing on plastic bags only:

Promote our earth!

Promote 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) for everything we use in life.(e.g. less fuel, less electricity, less paper, avoiding unnecessary use of plastic and plastic packaging, multiple use of reusable shopping bag, bring your plastic to recycler).

Promote that we can do more than just minimizing plastic bags. Promoting less oil consumption means less fuel which accounts for 50% oil consumption. It does not help our world if we succeed banning plastic bag but using unnecessary fuel. It is irony if there are environmentalists who fight for plastic bag ban and privately using cars instead of public transportation. Saving our world is more than avoiding plastic bag!

Attitude might be the answer for our earth problems.

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Represents the interest of the plastics manufacturing industry in Western Europe at European level and promotes the benefits of plastics in every aspect