The Plastic Bag Scandal

For many years we have seen blame put on the population for various reasons, the biggest being emissions from cars and being taxed out the backside to amend ‘our’ destruction of the planet. (supposedly)

The insanity of the blame culture of our very governments worldwide got a little more insane with the plastic bag charge. This to most is sold as a good will gesture, to stop the population using more plastic then they need to own. Just behind recycling and our working population, working a little more for put money in the governments pockets for a job they are paid to do. Sorting our bins for their gain. (most people see this as something we should do, sure. If we do not have to pay for the bin men.)

So, where does the money go from plastic bags?

A few of the large retailers are as follows that have supposed to have paid some of its money to good causes, what causes are mostly unknown.

This included the eight main retailers: 

• Tesco
  
• Sainsbury's
  
• Asda
  
• Morrisons
  
• Aldi
  
• The Co-operative Group
  
• Waitrose
  
• Marks and Spencer
  

In total, £66m was donated to good causes in the year 2016-17. Healthy number? Sure is, good on them if this has actually been pushed to charities and so forth. However.

This works out at 4p for every single-use bag sold. But why doesn't the full 5p get donated? First, retailers are allowed to deduct "reasonable costs" from their total before donating. The cost of the bags can't be claimed back, but retailers are allowed to deduct the cost of changing till systems, training staff and other administrative costs. Of the retailers who responded, 45 opted to deduct "reasonable costs" from their proceeds.This came to a total of £4.5m. Secondly, the 5p plastic-bag charge includes VAT - money that goes straight to government. Last year, large retailers paid £17m in VAT from the plastic-bag charge.

LINK

17m? Huge amount of money going straight the governments pockets wouldn’t you agree?

Interestingly however, this is all down to saying that plastic is bad and so are we!

However the correct version of this statement should be, we only use what we are given. We are only given plastic, no alternative. Paper bags would suffice but this costs more then the production of plastic bags, so who is being kind to our earth?

On top of that, plastic bags are supposed to be non-degradable. False.

Boy discovers microbe that eats plastic

Daniel had a thought it seems the PhDs hadn't explored: Plastic, one of the most indestructible of manufactured materials, eventually decomposes. It takes 1,000 years but decompose it does, which means there must be microorganisms out there to do the decomposing.

Could those microorganisms be bred to do the job faster?

That was Daniel's question, and he put to the test with a very simple and clever process of immersing ground plastic in a yeast solution that encourages microbial growth, and then isolating the most productive organisms.

The preliminary results were encouraging, so he kept at it, selecting out the most effective strains and interbreeding them. After several weeks of tweaking and optimizing temperatures Burd was achieved a 43 percent degradation of plastic in six weeks, an almost inconceivable accomplishment.

LINK

So who are the fools, I think you can imagine what that answer is. I guess we all just love throwing our money away.

Or you just take a bag you already have, rucksack, box whatever.

If you volunteer to pay these nonsense taxes it is YOUR choice.

a reply to: BlackProject

In America (some states, cities) the government doesn't receive any money from the bag tax. Which is good! But there is a bad part: The businesses receive the money and can use it for unspecified environmental clean up.

Who keeps the proceeds from the sale of reusable grocery bags and recycled paper bags?
The stores that sell the bags keep the money and must use it to cover the costs of providing the bags, complying with the bag ban, or encouraging the use of reusable grocery bags through educational materials or an educational campaign. ...

That is from the California bag tax website Calrecycle. And, as far as I can tell, the only specification they have for the money. IF all the other states/cities followed suit with such an "open for interpretation" specification..basically they are just letting the businesses keep the cash.

The only thing I can't understand as more and more countries adopt this "tax" is why that money isn't put in a world clean up fund for such things as eliminating the 3 plastic islands in the ocean or cleaning up the toxic waste, setting up more recycling centers, etc..

I don't think anyone would mind paying the money that much if it was going towards something that actually helped clean up the environment and not to the businesses which can basically do as they please with it.

Thanks for making this thread!
blend

a reply to: BlackProject

I don't buy single use plastic bags anymore so I don't care what happens in that scam to be honest.
Interesting thoughts though

I think tree-lovers made us change from Paper to Plastic bags. Made things worse. Amazing how many plastic bags are thought to be UFO's.

I have a lot of single use plastic bags that i turned into pillows

I would buy pillow covers at the dollar store for $1 and fill them with single use plastic bags.

just ball up single use plastic bags and fill the pillows. cost for these pillow was 1 dollar.

SO first and foremost the bag thing worked in California and i have a thread somewhere here discussing it.

Found it: www.abovetopsecret.com...

In California the "tax" was simply put in place requiring stores that normal rolled the cost of the bag into their overall prices to now charge for that bag. (it took a while for us to get used to it and now we don't even thing about it and simply keep bags in each car ready to go. The government here does not see any of that money. I will say that for major retailers they did not reduce prices and they perhaps because of economies of scale may make a bit with the 10c surcharge (the state determined that figure BTW)

perhaps you guys should push for that method as opposed to the the present method.

I read all this nonsense about plastic bags and recycling and the planet and so forth and I wonder how many of the people who care are 85 years old and dying of heart failure alone because their kids are all out marching to save the planet.

My point? I don't have one. I don't reckon I'll care about the planet if and when I'm 85 and dying. If I even know where I'm at.

a reply to: BrianFlanders
Nonsense?
It is a fact that plastic bags and plastic generally is slowly harming ocean life.
For that reason I support a reduction in use. But keep your blinkers on and call it nonsense.

originally posted by: CornishCeltGuy
a reply to: BrianFlanders
Nonsense?
It is a fact that plastic bags and plastic generally is slowly harming ocean life.
For that reason I support a reduction in use. But keep your blinkers on and call it nonsense.

Well, we could talk about giving out free condoms to reduce the number of people (and therefore the need for more resources). Good luck with that.

We do not actually know how long non-recycleable plastic bags take to bio-degrade, with estimates at 1,000s of years if at all. So when we are filling landfill sites and oceans with this material then the stuff is building up and going to be hanging around for a long time. They estimate that glass will never biodegrade, although this can be recycled.

I agree that the blame is unfairly being put on the general public when we are not responsible for at times what is a ridiculous amount of unnecessary packaging. If it is such a problem one wonders why these are still in use at all.

Goods being displayed in their box using plastic is not really necessary as most people buy online so the packaging makes little to no difference. A good picture on the box should be good enough, if we are looking at reducing this.

As for plastic bags, we don't need them. There should be a crack down on manufacturers and packing companies who use excessive amounts and ban put on any plastic that can't be recycled.

Don't blame the general public and don't tax us when it's largely beyond our control. This will only make people think about stealth taxes and undermine the problem.

a reply to: BlackProject

Why would you need someone to provide you with a bag and then claim you have no other choice in what you do?

That is utterly stupid.

Think for yourself, take a frikkin bag that will last years.

Is it so difficult?

originally posted by: BlackProject

Sainsbury's

Just to clarify, Sainsburys gets around the law by providing slightly thicker plastic bags that fall outside the definition of Single Use Carrier Bags. I do not believe they are required to hand any of the money over the charity, though they claim to do so anyway.

originally posted by: BrianFlanders

originally posted by: CornishCeltGuy
a reply to: BrianFlanders
Nonsense?
It is a fact that plastic bags and plastic generally is slowly harming ocean life.
For that reason I support a reduction in use. But keep your blinkers on and call it nonsense.

Well, we could talk about giving out free condoms to reduce the number of people (and therefore the need for more resources). Good luck with that.

Completely different topic and a sidetrack on your half, but for the record Britain actually does give out free condoms and other forms of contraception to anyone who wants it...so good luck with that dude lol

EDIT
Does your country not provide free condoms and other contraception to your people then?
Good luck with that lol
...now take your own bag shopping and stop thinking reducing plastic use is nonsense, because attitudes such as yours are slowly harming our oceans.

And we all get a LOT of spam mail through the door.
we have a LOT of take aways selling food.
and they all have to send a leaflet each month.
and taxis even the church!
each week we all get a plastic bag with a Big plastic bag in it!!!?
asking to give the are clothes. every week?
all this goes in the recycle bin.

we use't to get milk in glass bottles.
Now That was recycling.

all the so called recycling goes to a ship
that takes in out to sea and dumps it!
what! you think they dig a big hole for it?

Thing is, Tesco used to give out biodegradable bags. There was a problem where some lots had been left out in the rain before being brought into the shop and they kept breaking when the shopping was put in because they had already started to degrade. So it is not impossible to have biodegradable bags. In fact that is the type of plastic used for the caddy liners for the food and veggie waste that goes to composting . So why are the supermarkets et all not being required by law to use only biodegradable bags?
The other scam about the 5p charge and giving the proceeds to charity is the company gets tax relief on charitable donations. So we pay more for the bags than the shop pays, they take off admin fees and then the profit is used to reduce their tax bill coz it goes to charity.

What really gets me is all the brainwashed people going on about plastic bags killing the planet and totally ignoring the heard of elephants in the room that nobody is doing anything about which is really screwing up the planet, depleted uranium from bombs, Mercury run off, radiation from weapons testing and Fukushima, fertiliser and other chemicals that are creating deadly Cyanobacteria algae blooms ( check out Alabama Rot), fly ash and all sorts of nasties from fracking.

a reply to: CornishCeltGuy

Lol charge you to wrap your food up and take it home.
Give you rubber to wrap your baby juice up and throw it in the trash.

They also have stopped providing single use bags here. It's law now. We get the option of a box, a hessian bag for $1 or a reusable large plastic bag for 15 cents.

I also reused the disposable plastic bags many times, ultimately to wrap rubbish up and use it in the garbage. Not just take the shopping home and ditch it.

But somehow, I get the feeling that people who throw their bags away instantly, or even before they get home from the walk from the store, are the sort who will also pay 15 cents for a larger less biodegradable reusable plastic bag, and throw it away anyway... so as with everything, it's down to the people to make the changes, not have them forced upon them, when it's their mentality to throw stuff away in the first place.

a reply to: CthulhuMythos

Have you heard about the islands of plastic in the oceans gyres? thousands of miles wide, and even larger deep. And the problem with plastic, is that as it sinks lower, it breaks down into small particulate that becomes microscopic, becoming a toxic sludge like soft plasticine.

So the small sea creatures ingest the toxins. The big sea creatures ingest the small sea creatures. The bigger sea creatures ingest the big sea creatures. The large fish eat the bigger sea creatures. And we catch and eat the large fish, which have accumulated the toxins from all the way down the food chain.

'Toxic Whale Tax' is next, I'll bet!

originally posted by: CornishCeltGuy

originally posted by: BrianFlanders

originally posted by: CornishCeltGuy
a reply to: BrianFlanders
Nonsense?
It is a fact that plastic bags and plastic generally is slowly harming ocean life.
For that reason I support a reduction in use. But keep your blinkers on and call it nonsense.

Well, we could talk about giving out free condoms to reduce the number of people (and therefore the need for more resources). Good luck with that.

Completely different topic and a sidetrack on your half, but for the record Britain actually does give out free condoms and other forms of contraception to anyone who wants it...so good luck with that dude lol

Not a completely different topic. More people = more everything that people produce. Including more pollution and more waste.

The condom suggestion was actually kind of a joke but you could make a policy out of it by making sure everyone knows how and where to get free birth control and free abortions 24/7/365 and then set a limit on how many babies are allowed to be born in the world on any given day/week/month/year. Now, if you want to tax people for damaging the planet, tax them for reproducing and nip it in the bud.

And I mean a heavy tax that will suck like 1 million per child. And also raise the taxes on all the baby supplies like bottles, diapers and so forth. Let's say a 90% tax on diapers, which are definitely going to end up in the trash. And that's before those little monsters grow up and start generating adult-sized portions of waste, pollution and so forth. And everyone will sit around and wonder why taxing plastic grocery bags didn't do anything.