Plastic bag revolt spreads across Britain
Spurred by a filmmaker's documentary, the English town of Modbury became the first in Europe to ban them outright.
from the June 20, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 4
Grass-roots campaign
Another grass-roots action group, We Are What We Do, was surprised by the strength of feeling on the issue. For a book entitled "Change the world for a fiver" (five British pounds), its activists asked 1 million people what their top suggestions were to make the world a better place. Eschewing plastic bags was one of the most frequent responses, and is now one of its top campaigns.
"It's one of the worst indicators of indulgence and excess," says Eugenie Harvey, cofounder of the group, which seeks to inspire people to change the world through everyday actions. "In this country, we [each] use nearly 200 bags a year on average. They can take up to 500 years in landfill to break down. It's needless waste."
Hosking adds, "They are the epitome of throw-away living. It's amazing how many people want to [stop using them], how many towns are keen to get rid of them. We have had 800 e-mails a day." Modbury is even organizing for plastic bags to be recycled into furniture to remove at least some from circulation.
Yet an awful lot remain. Estimates vary wildly when it comes to mankind's propensity for the ultimate in convenience shopping. Environmental groups guesstimate that up to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year.
In Britain the figure is 8 billion – 134 per person. Some will be reused or employed as wastebasket liners. But billions end up back in the environment, fluttering from trees and hedges in China, disrupting the digestion of Indian cows, scudding along the ocean floor, and suffocating an estimated 100,000 birds, whales, seals, and turtles each year.
Reduced CO2 emissions
And there is a climate-change dimension as well: Plastic bags are manufactured using oil. Cutting usage in Britain by a quarter would reduce CO2 emissions by as much as 63 tons a year – equivalent to taking 18,000 cars off the road, the government says.
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