I was watching Seven Sharp the other night and Jeremy Wells and Hilary Barry were weighing up the relative inefficiency of reusable bags. This is well trodden ground in terms of environmental irony – the idea that one would have to use a reusable 170 times in order to make an actual reduction in one’s impact.
A later segment of the show had Wells opining about the ways in which he ‘already reuses’ his plastic bags – to pack the kids’ rugby gear, and to use as a rubbish bag for his bin.
This, I think, hits the nail on the head, and is the crux of the issue when it comes to actual reductions in plastic bag consumption. Many shopping bags live a second life as rubbish bags. So great is our dependency on plastic bags for this purpose that the body language of both hosts subtly communicated that neither would be changing their habits any time soon.
So the real issue, if we want to reduce plastic bag consumption in our own homes, is to find ways to minimise this secondary use.
And there is one obvious way to reduce this secondary use. It is to encourage composting. Effective composting habits can eliminate the quantity of household waste thrown in the bin by as much as 70%. A recent analysis by the Feilding council showed that 34% of landfill collected was unnecessary as it included easily compostable components.
As you reduce the amount of waste thrown in the rubbish bin, you automatically reduce the quantity of plastic bags consumed for this secondary purpose.
Once you see your drawer filling up with plastic bags, as a result of the composting you are doing, you are all but forced to cut back consumption, either by using fewer bags to begin with, or by reusing the ones you have already in your drawer.
Otaki Motel has four worm farms in operation. This is how much compost we stop going into the bin on a regular night, from the manager flat alone:
Plastic bags are a trigger point that everybody likes to focus on, and are particularly emblematic of the environmental crisis, because there is no easy, direct solution to the problem, and many of the solutions presented turn out to be treacherous.
There is a need to look at plastic bag consumption as part of a broader plan for waste minimisation.
The not-so-obvious solution to reducing to plastic bags is to prevent more rubbish from being thrown in the bin to begin with.
In the meantime, my worm farms are overflowing, so buzz me if you’re thinking of setting one up for your own home.
