And why does using plastic bags relate to global warming effect?
Not surprisingly, no-plastic-bags campaigns are currently popular activities in many parts of the world. According to “How can plastic bag addiction be cured?” (2015), Laws allowing the big department stores in which there are more 250 employees in England to be able to charge 5 pence per one plastic bags will come into effect on the next Monday (5 October 2015) in order to make shoppers use less plastic bags. In the meantime, many supermarkets also support reducing the use of plastic bags by offering promotions or extra points on clubcard to their customers if they reuse plastic bags or even use their own cloth bags. Nevertheless, Professor James Intilligator from Bangor University believes that such charge (only 5 pence per a bag) is too low to encourage them to avoid using plastic bags as punishment. In recent survey by Wrap—a recycling charity, there are 40% of shoppers who will use their bags although 39% think that this law will not successful to change the shoppers’ behavior.
By the way, in Thailand, now there is a new policy for this year to encourage people to decrease the use of plastic bag. The government will be in charge of this policy and incorporate with department stores, superstores, supermarkets, and minimarts by campaigning to reduce plastic bags in 15th of every month starting from August 2015. It also requires people to prepare their cloth bags or other types of bags not made from plastic to contain their stuff. The government expects that this policy will reduce life cycle of plastic bags from the production to elimination as well as one cause of global warming. Prior to this policy, there had been similar campaigns to give people free cloth bags; many companies and shops supported this idea by offering other people or customers free cloth bags which were produced by themselves as well.
However, it is interesting that most people believe that the idea and policy about using cloth bags instead of plastic ones is a good solution without any doubts. In the contrary, I suspected that when producing cloth bags, it requires a lot of resources such as fiber from plants, water, chemical fertilizer, pesticide and the like, and its production can also emit carbon dioxides together with other waste gases and water. Therefore, whether such an idea is good enough or not seem to be a thought-provoking question as well.
My question is:
Does using cloth bags help address the global warming problem?
How can plastic bag addiction be cured?. (2015, October 1). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34401851
_______________________________________
My question is:
Does using cloth bags help address the global warming problem?
___________
Reference
I think that reducing plastic bags is a good solution to solve the global warming as the world's important agenda; however, it's not the root cause in terms of the solution. To do so, the plastic factories should stop at least half of production for shopping bags and create some kinds of bags which are environmental, save, and low cost enough to use instead of plastic bags. I definitely believe that starting with primary cause is better way and more practical.
ReplyDeleteAs Barack Obama's recent policy, it seemed that the U.S. have given importance to the country's environmental topics, along with realizing as the long-term significant policy in global. Furthermore, we might compare with interesting NASA news last week which there is a kind of water on Mars. Apparently, we all cannot ignore this issue, we have to do something better for our small world.
I support your idea Punn. The sustainable solution of any problems should consider the root causes; however, it may be practically difficult sometimes. Referring to your ideas about the plastic factories, I think they would not to reduce half of their production rate due to the fact that this will definitely interrupt their business. Yet, I believe the government and they have to discuss in this issue seriously to help decrease the global warming problem along with environmental pollution for our world and well-being in the long run.
DeleteWhen I first read about the Thai proposal to reduce plastic bag use on the 15th of the month, I thought it was a joke. And it is. I don't think that Tops supermarkets are in it at all. Paragon supermarket is, but they have small signs above the cash registers at checkout, and on the 15th of last month or the month before, the one when it all started after much promotion, they gave me as many plastic bags as usual and said nothing at all about using less.
ReplyDeleteI also disagree with the idea of forcing department stores to charge customers for bags. A fairer solution than this communistic approach of dictating what citizens must do would be to charge the full cost of repairing the harm to the companies who make the bags, and then let the market sort out how consumers pay for it. If some businesses want to charge a set amount for each plastic bag, that's their decision, but they might decide other options work better.
If a supermarket refused to give me bags for my groceries, or charged what I thought excessive, I guess I would have to leave them and go to another shop. Of course, in communist and other dictatorships, citizens don't have such choices. We see the same thing with childish laws restricting the times when adults can buy alcohol, and in laws that force all restaurants to ban smoking, thereby reducing the choices for people who want to eat out.
I haven't answered Feem's question, but I'm very doubtful that using cloth bags could do much. Unless everyone, or a lot of people, used cloth bags rather than plastic, I don't think it would have much impact, so a way has to be thought of to persuade, rather than force, people to change their behaviour, and getting new plastic bags as needed seems to me much more convenient than carrying around numbers of cloth bags. I'm also wondering what the carbon emission cost of cloth bags is. In fact, what we need are some statistics to show the possible benefits of changing our customs, our attitudes and our values - across every culture.
And should we expect other cultures to follow in using cloth bags? In fact, if it's normal Thai behaviour to use plastic bags, and if being normal for a culture makes it morally right for that culture, then isn't it morally wrong to force Thai people to not use plastic bags in Thailand?
Turns out that Feem's question is more interesting than I thought when I started writing my comment.
I’ve never thought that such a policy about reducing plastic bag on the 15th of the month will be effective. It seems to be a good policy, but nothing. People’s behaviors still remained the same. Nonetheless, although it is not quite practical, I think it’s better than doing nothing at all to help reduce the plastic bags.
DeleteIt would be more effective if all shops, groceries, markets, and related stores support this idea by seriously collaborating to help reduce the use of plastic bag so that no shop can give free plastic bags to its customers as an incentive for them to buy goods in such a shop. So, in this way, I guess it needs time to make people be familiar with this action until it eventually becomes a social value and culture in terms of environmental conservation.
Even though there is no perfect bag which never causes carbon emission at all, I still agree to support the use of a cloth one as much as possible because in terms of elimination, a plastic one leads to more negative impacts on environment and health.
Personally, to charge them for new plastic bags is not a dictating approach, but it is to claim for their responsibility by imposing fine as a penalty for harming environment and the earth. As a matter of fact, the similar policy in which department stores are forced to charge shoppers for the plastic bags is commonly applied in many countries, particularly in Europe.
Meanwhile, one of the possible ways to morally persuade people to use more cloth bags and make this kind of use as new culture is to provide cloth bags to buyers for temporary borrowing with suitable deposit so that next time when they bring their own bags, they can get refund for returning cloth bags.
I reminded of Feem's post when I got to AUA this morning. It was raining, so had a wet umbrella with me. Just inside the Chamchuri door were ... plastic bags for wet umbrellas. I took one, and when I left, threw it into the bin also inside the entrance door.
ReplyDeleteThis seems to me even more wasteful of resources than is using plastic bags to carry my groceries home from Tops or Paragon.
I'm sure you can think of similar examples in your life.
Like your case, I have well experienced in using plastic bubble wrap only once. I got them a lot when buying fragile items which need them for protection, and I rarely reuse it for the similar purpose. In turn, I enjoyed pressing it just for fun and finally I threw it to the garbage.
Delete