On Nov 13, 12:09 pm, Martin wrote:
On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:48:48 -0800, Des Higgins wrote:
On Nov 13, 10:01 am, "Miles - Nature" wrote:
"Bob Hobden" wrote in message

... Interesting site about Modbury, the town that has banned plastic bags.
The video of a speech by Ray Anderson on the "Why and How to" page is
excellent.
http://www.plasticbagfree.com/index.php

and if anyone thinks this is OT for this ng check out the site.
--
Regards
Bob Hobden
17mls W. of London.UK

There is an awful load of rubbish being spread about - about rubbish.
First the website spends a long time wailing about all the plastic in the
world.
Straw man. It's only the plastic bags that are this issue.
I wonder if there are any facts available on the effectiveness of projects
like
this. My suspicion is that they are ways some people try to assuage their
guilt about their useage of resources.
Take Christmas for example. How many of the people involved in that project
will buy more plastic in one set of Christmas presents than a whole years
useage
of plastic bags?

The average number of plastic bags that one family goes through per
week is surprisingly high (maybe a dozen; maybe more; I do not have
the number to hand).
Multiply it up across a country and it becomes staggering. In
Ireland, we had a dreadful litter problem from them and we simply
banned them (banned giving them away free; you are allowed to sell
them; it is s small cost; maybe 20cents; I cannot remember as I have
not bought one in years). It worked overnight.

Do you also have a significant deposit on PEP bottles to make people return them
to supermarkets? Big business is pressuring the EU to make charging a deposit
illegal.
--

Martin

No; no deposit. There are quite a few "recycling" points for them
which makes it look ok but I THINK most of them get sent to China to
be incinerated (not quite as wasteful as it sounds as there is a long
line of empty ships going back to China after delivering stuff to
Europe and they do generate some heat and electricity from it) which
kind of defeats the purpose. At least it stops them going to landfill
but I am not sure how easy it is to genuinely recycle them. As a
society we generate vast amounts of them.

Des