By Joseph Quesnel
Banning plastic bags doesn’t exactly fit within the 3Rs model — reduce, re-use, recycle — many have come to associate with environmentalism.
But most activists agree that just discussing a ban on plastic bags, such as the one proposed by Somerset Ward city Coun. Diane Holmes, represents a positive shift in thinking.
“The debate over whether we should even allow them is a much more useful debate,” says Bea Olivastri, CEO of the Ottawa chapter of Friends of the Earth, an environmental group.
“I think Diane Holmes really put her finger on the right issue.”
Plastic bags are not biodegradable and as such remain in landfill sites indefinitely. Many of the bags end up flying away and land in other parts of the ecosystem, such as lakes and streams, where they are potentially dangerous to other life forms.
Plastic bags are also a nuisance because they tend to end up in drainage and sewage lines, causing blockages.
While environmentalists agree something must be done to curb plastic bag use, the means to do it are hotly contested.
Countries all over the world are confronting the problem of billions of plastic bags in the environment. Some cities, such as Dhaka, Bangladesh, have banned them outright.
Other countries have tried to curb their use through less drastic means. Ireland, for example, collects a 15-cent fee for each plastic bag sold at the supermarket.
In 2001, Ireland gave out 1.2 billion bags. After the fee was imposed, the number of bags at the 3,000 supermarkets across the country decreased by 90 per cent. As well, the government earned $3.4 million from the fee which was invested in the environment.
While these initiatives are government led, some are convinced the real responsibility lies with industry.
“I think we’ve let a lot of the people in the plastics (industry) off the hook,” says Olivastri. She says the onus is on the plastics industry to begin investing in recycling facilities.
Other industries, she says, such as the paper and soft drink bottling industry, were pressured into promoting recycling. It’s only a matter of time before plastics follow suit, she argues.
“They can see the handwriting on the wall for this stuff,” she says. “Most industries should get busy and organize themselves.”
Others, however,describe the issue as more complicated.
Roberto Narbaitz, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Ottawa, says any initiative must take into account the behaviour of suppliers and retailers.
He says environmentalists are up against a product that’s durable, inexpensive and convenient.
Narbaitz, who has been teaching solid waste management for 15 years, argues that it’s naïve to assume consumers will want to bring alternatives, such as e several cloth bags, when they shop.
He believes consumers might have problems with using boxes as an alternative because boxes don’t handle liquids as well as plastic bags do.
Activists, he contends, must understand the “economics of recycling” to solve the problem.
“The cost of recycling involves not just the collection, but also the selling of it, and the price is so low,” Narbaitz says.
Building a market for recycled plastics should be the priority, he says. A poor market is exactly what municipalities, such as Ottawa, are dealing with. Ottawa collects roughly 540 metric tonnes of plastic bags annually through its blue box program.
The problem is where to send them and for how much. According to city officials, Ottawa makes next to nothing on the bags and it costs $270 per metric tonne just to collect, sort and ready them for the market.
“Right now, there is no incentive to make it worthwhile. There’s not enough demand,” says Anne-Marie Fowler, manager of solid waste management services for the city.
The problem, says Fowler, is that recycled plastic bags are not “virgin plastics” — that is, plastics that don’t require extra work in the manufacturing process.
Old plastic bags, she says, often contain extraneous materials , such as receipts, that have to be cleaned out, adding to the municipality’s cost to recycle them.
But is there a way to create demand for recycled plastics without burdening the industry?
Narbaitz says government can play a role in spurring demand, pointing to some jurisdictions in the U.S. that have passed minimum recycled content regulations on plastics.
In many states, paper for newsprint has to contain a certain percentage of recycled material. This forces manu- facturers to buy the recycled paper that is already being used by the public. The same regulation now applies to plastic bag producers in California.
“This kind of thing helps create demand so that the whole recycling process works,” Nar- baitz says.
Once municipalities realize there is a profitable plastic recycling industry, he argues, they will buy into it because they can see they will at least break even.
Environmentalists are optimistic about the future. For many, it’s just a matter of time.
“About 20 years ago, there were only one or two mills that could recycle this stuff. Now, there’s dozens of facilities to accept recycled material. These will not go away,” says Bob Argue, president of REIC Perth, an environmental consulting firm.
“We’re still in the beginning stages of all this,” Argue says, pointing to the prevalence of blue box recycling — something unheard of at one point.
Meanwhile, environmental activists will continue to push for innovative ideas that combine the efforts of government and industry.
“Anything that makes you more conscious of this is probably a good thing,” Olivastri says.