Target calls it a wrap on plastic bags
The retail giant Target has confirmed it will ban plastic bags in its 283 Australian stores next month. It will be the first large retailer to break ranks and ban bags on environmental grounds.
Instead of issuing plastic bags to shoppers at checkouts, from June 1 Target will require shoppers to either bring their own bags or buy reusable bags for $1 each or compostable corn starch bags for 10 cents each.
Target says the ban will stop 100 million plastic bags from going into landfill and polluting the environment each year - or just under 3 per cent of the 4 billion bags that pass through Australian checkouts each year.
via hippieflavor: robotsalsa: mhking: thephlipside: peetypassion
I’m not the biggest hippie-thumper out there, but I own 3-resuable grocery bags myself, and enjoy seeing the reduction in waste going out in my trash cans.
Great….except for the part where 90% of those cornstarch bags will go into general waste anyway (i.e. landfill) because there’s no processing infrastructure for biodegradable plastics, and very few people will compost the bags themselves. At the moment it’s just a switch from sending oil-based plastics to landfill to sending plant-based plastics to landfill where they can’t be broken down anyway due to the extreme toxicity of that environment.
Still, it’s a good start and I’m all for retailers not treating people like children (or pandering to their need to be treated like children) because we don’t have the presence of mind to take bags with us to the shops. Also, as the volume of commodity bio-plastics in the market increases, maybe the government will be forced to do something about setting up composting disposal infrastructure and education schemes.
