A bit of a rant - feel free to skip
I wonder if all the people who have so gleefully jumped on the Plastic is Evil bandwagon, have also decided not to wear or use anything containing polymers?
No bedding, duvets, carpets, light switches?
No replaced joints, sutures or disposable syringes or gowns in hospitals?
No light switches, Sellotape, book jackets, toys?
And much, much, much more.
And if they think I'm being silly, as no doubt they will, has it occurred to them that in order to ban plastic bags, all governments had to do was stop importing them in the first place?
Plastic is still used everywhere, despite every supermarket crowing they are 'plastic free'. Only now the plastic bags have their own logo printed on and have to be paid for.
Is the penny dropping yet I wonder?
And do they know that the oceans are full of our plastic detritus because our governments and most others are quite happy to dump it, wholesale, out there?
Landfills can only hold so much, so tonnes of plastic is regularly towed out to sea and sunk. And then it comes loose with the obvious consequences.
Greenpeace and Ocean Defenders have been trying to stop this for a very long time. And so they should, I am all for clean and safe seas but why are we only being made to take action now when the supermarkets have decided to charge us for bags they previously gave away in droves?
The reusable bags we are encouraged to take with us (and with which I agree) contain plastic as well - unless consumers have knitted them from non-acrylic wool or non-plastic string.
And do they know that what is loosely termed the Third World uses many more plastic bags than most developed counties (China being a particularly high user) and little can be done to stop that?
When I first came to New Zealand, my shopping was loaded into a Kleensak, a double-layer paper sack which, then doubled as a rubbish bag.
This was stopped when accusatory publicity, designed to make the consumer feel guilty and culpable - similar to the barrage which is hitting us now against plastics, was promulgated about the way we were depleting the forests, including the rain forests, in our lust for paper, cardboard and all its derivatives.
So we did our bit, followed the trend, and like good little sheep consumers, turned to the easily available, ubiquitous plastic bags and packaging.
Plastic replaced glass for containers and components which had used metal.
And so on and so, wearily, on.
I have, with my meagre resources, supported a charity which particularly loathes the way governments dump rubbish in the seas. The protests fall on deaf ears because that is "the cheapest way of doing it".
But I also want to make sure that I am not contributing to the rape of the earth and the loss of trees by now collecting the dozens of paper bags my supermarket has put in place of plastic ones.
Currently I ask for my stuff to be packed into cardboard boxes the shop already received.
They still send some things in paper bags.
I take them to the local organic shop who have posters on the walls showing scary statistics about what the huge upturn in paper-use will do to the earth.
If you have got so far, thank you for listening to my rant. You may not agree with me and that's fine, we all have a right to individual thoughts on this. We cannot rely on statistics put out by the media who are past masters at manipulation and are well-paid to do so, but surely it is obvious that if we use more paper, we use more trees?
Only a small percentage of paper is made from rags by the way.
I'll get me coat.......