Binning the plastic bag
The United Nations is currently hosting a major climate change conference on the Indonesian island of Bali. Delegates from over 180 nations are joined by representatives from intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations to explore the possibility of a new agrement to succeed the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. We'll have a live update from the conference on Sunday morning and debate some of the ethical and political issues on the table in Bali. Bringing some of those issues down to earth for us in this guest post is Declan Allison, a campaigner with Friends of the Earth, who argues that it's time to bin the plastic bag and radically rethink our society's approach to consumption.
Waste is often people’s entry point into environmentalism. Litter, recycling and landfill are issues that people understand – or think they understand. I often hear people say, “I recycle, so I’m doing my bit.” The humble plastic bag, probably more than any other item, has become a modern icon – a symbol of our increasingly wasteful way of life. It hangs, tattered, from trees and hedges; it adorns telegraph wires; and clogs streams.
Most people will claim they put their plastic bags to good use. They’re used for peddle bins; to put dirty boots into after a walk; and to pick up dog poo. All this is true – up to a point. The average household has around 80 plastic bags tucked away in a drawer somewhere. Granted, some of the bags people take their shopping home in are put to use, but most simply accumulate until there is no more room in the drawer. Then they are thrown out along with the rest of the rubbish.
Despite their iconic status plastic bags make up only 0.3 per cent of our waste stream. The real problem is not the bags themselves, but our throw-away, resource intense lifestyles that plastic bags represent.
We are heading towards a low carbon, resource constrained future. The twin drivers of climate change and peak oil mean we must restructure our economy, societies and lifestyles to meet the demands they will place on us. How we travel, plan our towns and cities, and manage the earth’s finite resources all need to be reconsidered.
Our current resource wasteful structures and practices are not compatible with the urgent need to tackle climate change. We simply produce too much waste. The necessity to manage and dispose of waste produces a great deal of carbon dioxide; as does the production of fresh goods to replace the ones that have been disposed of, either to landfill or by incineration. There are sustainable waste management methods, such as recycling or anaerobic digestion of biodegradable waste, but the best method of all is not to produce waste in the first place.
If developing countries are to raise their standard of living, and they should be given every opportunity to do so, then we in developed countries need to drastically reduce our level of consumption. The earth simply does not have the resources, land or atmosphere to keep pace with such consumption levels.
Comments
It's human greed, Declan. Human beings want more than they need and don't appreciate the implications of a "want-based" culture.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with a "want-based" culture. Pursuit of happiness, and all that. It's a certain ideologically-motivated foolishness that ascribes taxes and bans and restrictions to human activities rather than optimistic, technology-based solutions; the new religion with its litany of sins - leading ultimately to the belief that humans are this scar upon the natural world and this feeling that everything would be much better if we were all dead - becomes wearying.
The only problem we have is a temporary one: our current technologies and lifestyles can produce their own issues of sustainability. And that's precisely why the earth's resources are not this static quantity that Declan assumes above, but instead the earth's resources are relative to human technology. What is a 'resource'? It's a naturally occurring commodity that's used in the course of human lifestyle. As technology changes, so do the 'resources' and the way we impact the environment.
It used to be, for example, that we needed lead in our petrol. Now lead-based petrol, basically, doesn't exist - and that a VERY short time later. It used to be that CFCs were universal in certain products; now they're gone.
Despite on what Friends of the Earth, in their impatience, may insist, we won't always need the same resources that we do today. These protracted models which project waaay into the future are based upon the falsehood that we will never change the resources we need and that technology is a static quantity (unless we're jolted by a Good Government of course). Thus the problems are temporary. In the future we'll be mining our own landfills, generating power by sustainable means, using resources in renewable ways, and more - and we'll do it all as rampant consumers and lovers of freedom, without apology, without compromise.
That's the future.... not the horrible bagless, rationed version advocated by Declan. It's the job of free markets to respond to these tensions - as they already are - and produce better results for the future of humanity. Rather than a society that is invested in human achievement, prosperity and betterment through technology, we're surrounded by depressing whiners who take it all for granted and do nothing but complain that we haven't quite reached "Utopia" yet.
Bottom line? When you're halfway to the Promised Land, it's asinine to say you'd prefer Egypt.
I'm astonished by this person John Wright and his ability to generate bizarre defenses of american consumerism. He's quite indifferent to the implications of human greed or consumption in respect of the planet.
Well said, Declan. We need a lot more thinking on the issue of consumption, That's where the debate needs to happen.
John - i'm really not convinced on this one - the freemarket has about as much chance of dealing with the serious environmental issues we are facing as it does of tackling global poverty.
I think you underestimate the size of the problems we are facing, and our capacity to deal with them in a controlled, measured fashion.
But preserving resources as we move over to new technologies isn't the only reason to stop using plastic bags. The fact that they are killing thousands of marine animals each year should be reason enough - is it not?
Re #2
Throughout history man has been making predictions of the future. With the advent of technology, the predictions moved away from religious topics to scientific and techological. Unfortunately for the speakers, many of these failed predictions have been recorded for all future generations to laugh at. Here is a selection of the best.
1. “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.
2. “We will never make a 32 bit operating system.” — Bill Gates
3. “There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States.” — T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, in 1961 (the first commercial communications satellite went into service in 1965).
4. “A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” — New York Times, 1936.
5. “Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical (sic) and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.” The Wright Brothers flew at Kittyhawk 18 months later. “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” — Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895. “There will never be a bigger plane built.” — A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people
6. “The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine.” — Ernest Rutherford, shortly after splitting the atom for the first time. “There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932
7. “The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.” -– Charlie Chaplin, actor, producer, director, and studio founder, 1916. “Television won’t last. It’s a flash in the pan.” — Mary Somerville, pioneer of radio educational broadcasts, 1948. “[Television] won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” — Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946.
8. “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad.” — The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903
9. “X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” — Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1883.
10. “How, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense.” — Napoleon Bonaparte, when told of Robert Fulton’s steamboat, 1800s.
11. “Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever.” — Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1889 (Edison often ridiculed the arguments of competitor George Westinghouse for AC power).
To these we can now add those from Declan Allison
a. We are heading towards a low carbon, resource constrained future.
b. The earth simply does not have the resources, land or atmosphere to keep pace with such consumption levels.
John, nuff said!
Regards,
Michael
Richard #3- You're astonished easily.
dp #5- You may be right that the free market is incapable of solving our environmental problems, though you're wrong about its effect on poverty. But I ask you, what's your alternative?
Michael #6- Agree. Thanks!
What a pile of horse manure this blog entry is.
"If developing countries are to raise their standard of living, and they should be given every opportunity to do so, then we in developed countries need to drastically reduce our level of consumption. The earth simply does not have the resources, land or atmosphere to keep pace with such consumption levels."
Who is anyone to tell ME how much I can and can't consume? This Robin Hood mentality is the clarion call of socialists, communists, and internationalists. It's a prescription for worldwide mediocrity, poverty, failure. How about talking about having fewer people by controlling population? How about talking about real programs to develop technology instead of wasting resources on worthless redundant products that are built for ego and little else not even making any market sense?
Anyone worried about CO2 emissions would do well to consider that they have made an excellent case FOR plastic bags. They do not break down into CO2 the way paper does. You do not have to cut down trees eliminating the photosynthesis their chloroplasts perform to combine CO2 and nutrients and energy from the sun to make oxygen. (this is why when Indonesians and Brazilians burn down the rain forests for the benefit of a handful of slash and burn farmers, they are doing the environment a terrible disservice.)
Dennis Golden #1, who are you to tell me that I do not have a right to be greedy. If Americans whose economy is 2/3 private consumption which constitutes 1/6 of all consumption on earth were to be significantly curtailed, it would likely throw much of the developing world into an economic depression.
I think it's about time politicians and environmentalists were held to account by forcing them to come up with viable realistic plans as to how CO2 output is to be reduced equitably and without causing mass economic chaos and mass starvation instead of just coming up with numbers and wash their hands of the details. So far they've wasted at least fifteen years doing nothing else expecting others to figure out how to achieve their pie in the sky goals.
As for garbage, why doesn't Europe just buy its way out of it by paying developing nations to take it of its hands the way it plans to avoid deep economic cuts to reduce CO2 output by buying carbon credits in a phony carbon trading scheme already proven to be a fraud. What will you do when those who sell the carbon credits don't meet their commitments, impose financial punishment on their starving nations?
I think at least in so far as the US is concerned, Son of Kyoto will go down in flames in the US Congress just the way Kyoto did (95-0) unless it is far different, more realistic, and fair. How about Europe talking to China and India about cutting back their CO2 output instead of giving them another free pass?
Hello Mark,
"Anyone worried about CO2 emissions would do well to consider that they have made an excellent case FOR plastic bags. They do not break down into CO2 the way paper does."
If landfill sites are getting full, as they are around here, then waste is put into incinerators, burning the bags into CO2 again.
"You do not have to cut down trees eliminating the photosynthesis their chloroplasts perform to combine CO2 and nutrients and energy from the sun to make oxygen."
No again, at least in part. At least for part of the paper production, wood is grown to produce paper, first taking CO2 out of the atmosphere. Drilling up oil, turning it into plastics and then burning it only adds CO2 without taking any of it from the atmosphere.
greets,
Peter