Plastic Bag Ban?

A simple children's story,  A Bag and a Bird, from the amazingly talented author and illustrator, Pamela Allen, tells a tale of the potential danger that plastic bags pose to our environment and our wildlife. In her story, it's an ibis that gets tangled in one of these lightweight nightmares but it could just as easily have been a pelican or a turtle or any number of other sea creatures. In this story, all ends well but we all know that isn't so outside of the fictional world of children's picture books.

A simple story about a big problem.

The harm plastic does in our environment is, I think, widely known and commonly accepted. So today, when a ban on lightweight plastic bags comes in to force in the Australian state where I live, I found myself asking the question, "What took so long?" As with many things, the wheels of government turn much more slowly than if we just make a personal decision and act on it.  

A little flyer from our local shop.

While lightweight plastic bags, the kind you often (used to) see piled up in supermarket trolleys are now banned here, and in other the Australian states, there are still plastic bags to which the ban does not apply. Heavyweight plastic bags, thin plastic produce bags, bin liners and garbage bags are still going to be available from retailers in the state where I live. Like Cheryl, over at A Simply Good Life, I think that these "acceptable" plastics will just end up in landfill eventually. Why not ditch these plastic bags altogether? Here are the things we do at our place to avoid using plastic bags:

Instead of bringing home groceries in any kind of plastic bag, I have collected fabric bags, some made from organic cotton and some from reclaimed cottons. I 💚 that these can be used over and over again and that they can be washed if they get a bit grotty. I send them, shredded into small strips, to the compost bin when they are beyond repair.  Perhaps, you might be lucky enough to have Boomerang Bags operating in your community and will have that source of reusable bags to use. When I go to the market, I take my basket and a few fabric bags so that I don't bring home any plastic from there either.

A few of our plastic bag alternatives.

Instead of throwaway plastic produce bags, we have a set of little mesh and cotton drawstring bags. I bought mine from an ethical online store, when they were on sale, but they can be readily sewn up from mesh fabric or even old curtain material. Here's a tutorial and a pattern (scroll down through blog post to find it) for how to make them. 

My market basket.

One common question that seems to have been on people's minds, in the lead up to our plastic bag ban, has been, "What will we line our bin with now?" We don't line our little kitchen bin with anything anymore but Liz, over at Eight Acres, uses sheets of newspaper to line hers. We use sheets from the little local newspaper, that lands on our driveway every week, to wrap any "icky scraps" before putting them in the freezer. Now, we don't have many "icky scraps", because we compost our fruit and veg scraps and our dog takes care of most of our meat scraps, but I find that by wrapping and freezing what we do have to dispose of, there's no oozy, smelly stuff in our bin. A quick rinse out and it's ready to go back under the kitchen sink. I just have to remember to put any wrapped scraps in the wheelie bin on rubbish collection day.

Perhaps, remembering to bring along reusable bags when shopping will be one of the biggest challenges in the early days of this plastic bag ban. Having lightweight plastic bags, to plonk our purchases in, is something we've all gotten used to at the checkout. There was a time though when plastic bags did not exist, as hard as that may be to imagine given the way plastics are such an ever-present part of our lives now. That means though that we can get used to doing without them again too.  Perhaps, there will be a happy outcome, just as there is in the story of A Bag and a Bird.

Do you have a plastic bag ban in place where you live? What alternatives do you, or are you planning to, use?

Meg