Ryan Bridge: A few questions about the plastic bag ban

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

Remember the excitement, the pride at being first, the proclamations of cleaning up our world and making it better for tomorrow.

I'm talking about the single plastic use bag ban of 2018. Remember that?

A few salient points to note this morning, six years on from when it was announced.

There's a report out this morning on plastics.

The use of plastic is expected to triple globally by 2060 most of it in Africa and Asia. Plastic waste will also triple by 2060 half of it will end up in the landfill less than 1/5 of it will be recycled.

So well done. Our Pak'nSave efforts, we're really doing well for the world.

Who's profiting from this? That's the other thing I wonder, I don't know how much supermarkets make every time I forget my reusable plastic bags and I have to buy the paper ones.

But the price of the paper one the other day that I paid was 40 cents. And I can remember when they first started selling them, it was like 10 or 20 cents.

So there's been a bit of inflation going on since then. And now they've got Christmas trees printed on them, how much extra is that costing?

I don't want a Christmas tree on my paper bag, thank you very much. I want the paper bag not to break just because I put some wet milk in it.

So annoying.

In Australia Coles and Woolworths apparently profit $71 million a year off their reusable bags.

Now, I don't know what the number is here, but I would have thought we'd be asking ourselves a few questions.

Do I want us going back to plastic bags?

No, I don't necessarily want us going back to plastic bags.

But could we please know - were our bags actually ending up in the ocean in the first place or was that other people's bags?

Were you throwing your plastic bag in the ocean? When you went and checked to the beach with the bags from Countdown New Zealand?

Hm. I don't know.

And how much are the supermarkets making out of us for the bags that break before we get them to the boot of our cars?

Just a couple of things I'd like to know.

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