Thread: Con job or real

Yes and no IMO. The bags you but you tend you use then put in the bin - a lot of the disposable plastic bags used ended up drifting around and causing harm elsewhere. Having said that, I now buy far more plastic bags than I used to as I always recycled mine for other uses - but I guess a lot didn’t.

Coles home delivery will not come in the house now.
Everything's delivered in plastic bags ! Plus they charge for them.

They are re-usable but we have loads of them now !


Colin

It's maybe not a con job but certainly Virtue Signalling by the supermarkets and by the responsible government.

I can recall reading a study some time ago that the majority of plastic bags in the Pacific Gyre and elsewhere originate from a few rivers in Asia and Africa.

In countries with good municipal garbage collection it is not really a problem.

In Asia and Africa in rural areas there is no garbage collection so often villagers just stack their garbage in plastic bags and/or chuck them in the river.

I can recall in about 1985 The Malaysian Government was going to have a conference in KL so decided to put a boom across the river and they intercepted 16 tonnes of garbage a day.

I have visited many villages in Malaysia and Thailand and seen first hand the mess. Also drinks are sold in plastic bags which adds to the volume.

Way back in the 80s you could tell that you were approaching a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan by the increasing levels of plastic bags adorning every fence line. I doubt this has changed in regards to refugee camps.
Regards PhilipA

Money for old rope.
All my retail life we gave away bags which cost about .015c ea.
Now we charge .10c or .20c for a plastic bag which cost .03c.
It's a joke, we just recoup money on packaging.
I assure you the Coles & Woolies of this world will be paying a lot less & making more out of them.
In Doomadgee anyway, there are still plastic bags blowing everywhere & now they are heavy weight & don't breakdown at all.
Jonesfam

Just as an aside we buy the insulated bags which are more expensive but last quite a long time.

Contrary to this we now buy smallish garbage bags to put in the kitchen tidy when we used to reuse the flimsy bags from the supermarket for that.

Crazy stuff isn't it.
Regards PhilipA

Hi,
I remember the string shopping bags Dad made out of green fishing twine using a netting needle and a one inch former.
They lasted for years.
Cheers

Well my rubbish used to go in the disposable shopping bags - poor plastic with a relatively short life of about 6 months in the tip. Now it goes in hi quality plastic bags that have about 1000 year lifespan in the tip.

Just a big "Look at me " con job from our illustrious premier in WA as far as I'm concerned. No real thought went into the ban at all. The Cook reuses virtually all plastic bags and the ones they banned were ideal for the rubbish. Now she uses the others that green grocery comes in. They're smaller but still do the job.
Any bags we can't reuse I tie a knot in to make it harder for them to be blown around if they escape the rubbish truck. I've seen them going down the freeway with plastic bags blowing out the bag and going every where.
Some few years ago we did a cruise through Asia and as a previous poster said the rubbish off Singapore was horrendous. Not saying it was Singers doing it, but I'm sure it never floated up from here in Oz.
And we can't really blame Woolies etc. as it was forced upon them by all our peanut pollies.
AlanH.