Position Statement on Plastic Bags

Position Statement on Plastic Bags

In Brief

Plastic bags are often dominating environmental headlines. In recent years, a number of political initiatives (national and local) have been taken, involving proposals to impose a levy or ban on plastic shopping bags in Uganda.

Within this context of an increased interest on this issue, Uganda Retailers and Wholesalers Association (URWA) intends through this paper to give its view on this highly sensitive political issue.

Based on various facts and figures as well as the expertise accumulated by its members throughout the country, Uganda Retailers and Wholesalers Association’s position on carrier plastic bags can be summarized as follows:

•       Neither the imposition of a mandatory levy or ban on plastic bags nor the promotion of biodegradable plastic bags constitute adequate tools to reduce the environmental impact of plastic bags used by consumers

•       Efforts to achieve environmental improvements should include initiatives involving the business sector which can be developed in constructive collaboration with the local authorities and government. They prove to be more effective especially when they are combined with raising awareness and education campaigns as well as the promotion of reusable bags.

About plastic bags

Definition

A plastic shopping bag is a polymer carry bag provided or utilized at the retail point of sale for carrying and transporting retail goods and which is only intended for one way use. This includes all single use plastic retail bags, but excludes produce bags used in-store, dry cleaning bags, garbage bags and other primary product packaging.¹

General Comments

Because of their light weight, plastic bags only constitute a tiny percentage of the overall waste stream but they tend to be in the spotlight because they are an icon of modern convenience culture and lifestyles. Plastic bags only relate to 0.01% of the municipal waste stream so any legislative measures in addition to the general obligations from the respective national packaging legislation, appear disproportionate to the environmental benefit that they would bring compared to tackling other, larger waste streams. Often putting in place high profile measures on such a small proportion of the waste stream risks giving the wrong environmental message because consumers may think they are "doing their bit" by reducing or reusing bags and ignore the rest of their environmental impacts, which could be far more significant.

Plastic bags are popular with consumers and retailers because of all the practical advantages they offer; they are light, cheap, strong, and a hygienic way to transport food and products home. Moreover, several studies have shown that consumers use a high percentage of these plastic shopping bags to hold kitchen waste prior to depositing it in their waste bins for collection and recycling. For example, URWA estimate that 4 out of 5 Ugandan consumers reuse their single use carrier bags in the home, so any taxation system must take account of the impact on purchases of other plastic bags for the home such as refuse sacks.

Views on the environmental impact of plastic bag consumption vary greatly. Whereas some consider that they are just a nuisance, others believe they are a real hazard that should be banned. This is also reflected in the variety of instruments used to tackle the plastic bag issue.

The main arguments against plastic bags are linked to the littering issue in some countries as well as the persistence in landfill. They are also attacked because they have become the symbol of modern society’s unsustainable lifestyles. And finally the environmental impact linked to the consumption of raw materials and the production process is also pointed at.

Various measures have been taken in order to address the above-mentioned impacts with more or less success. These measures can be categorized as follows:

•         Ban on plastic bags

•         Market-based instruments (mandatory or agreed on a voluntary basis) such as the use of taxation or charges

•         Awareness raising campaigns

•         Infrastructure to deal with end of life plastic bags (i.e. producer responsibility schemes)

•         Promotion of certain types of plastic bags (i.e. biodegradable plastic bags)

o  Offering reusable bags as alternative to the consumer

o  Voluntary agreements between government and industry

Ban

A ban is a very powerful tool in environmental policy but is also radical and market intrusive and should therefore only be used as a last resort. It should therefore be deployed only when there are substantial environmental grounds for such a measure based on Life cycle assessment (LCA) results, which is not the case for plastic bags.

Before introducing a ban it is important to propose effective and practical alternatives to consumers to carry their shopping home but most importantly to consider the various consequences of the ban. The ban of plastic bags can indeed stimulate the use of other types of bags and nets with greater environmental impacts.

Moreover, a ban on one product in a particular material - such as the plastic carrier bag - cannot reduce the problem of litter. Litter consists of many different fractions of which the plastic carrier bag accounts for only a small proportion. Of the total volume of plastic carrier bags, only a tiny percentage ends up as litter. Solving littering requires other measures such as awareness raising campaigns against littering.

Finally, a ban would be illegal under the some laws (the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive) as every packaging which fulfills the Essential Requirements is allowed to be used all over the country.

Taxation

The power of market-based instruments to change behaviour is undeniable but there must be a clear link between the instrument adopted and the environmental aim being pursued. The suitability of a measure should be carefully evaluated and benchmarked vis-à-vis other available options and the costs of the measures proposed should be proportionate to their environmental benefit. The use of economic instruments such as taxation should not be used for the primary purpose of raising revenue for the state.

Introducing a levy on plastic bags may reduce their consumption in the short term but proves to be unsustainable in the long run. For example, Ireland introduced a levy on plastic bags in 2002 mainly to reduce litter. The levy had the desired effect in the first years with a sharp drop in plastic bags usage (95%) and a shift to reusable bags. However, after some years, plastic bag usage started to increase again slightly, which pushed the Irish government to increase the levy in 2007. Changes in legislation are in the process of being introduced which will allow for an increase in the levy to 44€-c.

One further issue with any taxation or levy fee system is deciding how the revenue raised should be used. Often this income just goes into general taxation rather than for any environmental benefit.

From this perspective, voluntary agreements with retailers including realistic short term reduction targets and long term ambitious goals are more sustainable solutions. For example they appear to be working well in the UK, where leading high street and grocery retailers exceeded their voluntary target (facilitated through WRAP) to reduce the environmental impact of carrier bags by 25% by the end of 2008. Since the commitment in 2006, retailers actually delivered a 40% reduction in the environmental impact of carrier bags. This was achieved through an absolute reduction in the number of carrier bags distributed to customers by 26% and simultaneous efforts to increase the recycled content of single use bags and reductions in their overall weight. Similarly in France, the amount of plastic bags decreased by 85% between 2000 and 2008 without introducing any taxation or ban.

(³ When France tried to introduce a decree including a general ban on the distribution of non-biodegradable single-use carrier bags to end consumers in 2006, the European Commission considered it was contrary to article 18 of the Directive on Packaging and Packaging Waste which states that Member States shall not impede the placing on the market of their territory of packaging which satisfies the provisions of this Directive. The European Commission added that the measures envisaged in the French decree lacked proportionality.)

In general, any measure implemented in relation to plastic bags should therefore be based on voluntary agreements with the industrial sectors.

Producer responsibility

Successful alternative economic instruments, such as producer responsibility-based systems should be further taken into consideration when environmental impacts of plastic bags are considered. These systems have indeed proven to be more effective in triggering environmental improvement than taxation, in a cost-effective and flexible way.

The environmental impact linked to the consumption of raw materials and production processes can be best offset by high levels of material recycling and energy recovery. In cases where a collection system for plastic packaging including plastic films is in place plastic bags can be integrated within this system and can therefore be part of the solution. These systems can indeed use several technological solutions that allow the recovery and recycling of plastic bags and therefore reduce the flow of plastic shopping bags into landfill and litter. The environmental impact of plastic bags is lowest when these are recycled or incinerated with energy recovery alongside other plastic waste.

Solutions to the plastic bags issue should therefore involve the improvement of plastics recycling and efforts from the authorities should be geared towards developing a market for reprocessing plastics.

Consumer communications

An important part of the solution to the impacts of plastic bags is to produce a permanent change in behaviour by engaging customers through education and encouragement. It is necessary to drive forward local communications and information campaigns to raise consumer awareness of the issue, associated problems like littering and appropriate solutions. In the UK the Government funded a national campaign known as ‘Get a bag habit’ to encourage consumer behaviour change.

In order for any national or local campaign to achieve success it also needs to be complemented by ensuring that alternative reusable bags are readily available to consumers at a reasonable cost. In most of the western countries these alternatives are widely available and commonly used.

Retailers can play an important role in encouraging consumers to change their consumption habits in this regards. They can be involved in the development of communications strategies that would educate and motivate consumers to consume less one-way plastic shopping bags and prefer more sustainable options to carry their goods home.

Also, some retailers have sought to encourage their customers to be greener through the use of additional reward points when using reusable carrier bags in their store. In France, an awareness campaign towards consumers (including training cashiers) has led to the almost complete disappearance of plastic bags in shops.

Any measure implemented in relation to plastic bags should therefore proactively involve consumers.

Biodegradable bags

There is an increasing enthusiasm for biodegradable plastic bags due to the growing perception that they are more environmentally friendly. A shift to these types of bags would not reduce the amount of bags discarded as litter. On the contrary, they can potentially add on to the litter problem as the consumer may believe that they just “break down and disappear” after disposal. Moreover, biological degradation without the required condition (micro-organism, temperature and humidity) is very slow and can take several years.

With regards to their sustainability, biodegradable bags are often described as environmentally superior to traditional plastic bags although this assumption is not implicitly correct. Being biodegradable or biomass based is not synonymous with being environmentally friendly or sustainable. Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies have demonstrated that bio-based plastic bags are not more sustainable than fossil-based plastic bags.

Finally, biodegradable bags offer no advantage in terms of waste management over conventional ones. In fact they could damage existing collection and recycling systems for plastic packaging. They need to be sorted separately otherwise they contaminate the other plastic waste and harm the quality of the recycled output.

National authorities promoting these types of bags and retailers using these new materials therefore have a responsibility for introducing them in a responsible and coordinated manner so that previous education efforts for waste prevention and recycling are not undermined.

Conclusions

Focusing on plastic bags is in general a very limited approach because they only constitute a tiny part of the overall waste. A more holistic approach is needed than imposing a ban on plastic bags or a levy to address the plastic bags issue.

Consumers need to be given a better understanding of the relative environmental impacts of their lifestyles in order to make effective choices. The imposition of a mandatory levy or ban on plastic bags, or the promotion of biodegradable plastic bags, do not constitute adequate tools to reduce the environmental impact of plastic bags used by consumers.

Efforts to achieve environmental improvements should include voluntary agreements between government and industry. They prove to be more effective especially when they are combined with raising awareness and education campaigns as well as the promotion of reusable bags.