Posted on 03/08/2008 3:11:32 AM PST by Stoat
Scientists and environmentalists have attacked a global campaign to ban plastic bags which they say is based on flawed science and exaggerated claims.
The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are false, experts have told The Times. They pose only a minimal threat to most marine species, including seals, whales, dolphins and seabirds.
Gordon Brown announced last month that he would force supermarkets to charge for the bags, saying that they were “one of the most visible symbols of environmental waste”. Retailers and some pressure groups, including the Campaign to Protect Rural England, threw their support behind him.
But scientists, politicians and marine experts attacked the Government for joining a “bandwagon” based on poor science.
Lord Taverne, the chairman of Sense about Science, said: “The Government is irresponsible to jump on a bandwagon that has no base in scientific evidence. This is one of many examples where you get bad science leading to bad decisions which are counter-productive. Attacking plastic bags makes people feel good but it doesn’t achieve anything.”
Campaigners say that plastic bags pollute coastlines and waterways, killing or injuring birds and livestock on land and, in the oceans, destroying vast numbers of seabirds, seals, turtles and whales. However, The Times has established that there is no scientific evidence to show that the bags pose any direct threat to marine mammals.
They “don’t figure” in the majority of cases where animals die from marine debris, said David Laist, the author of a seminal 1997 study on the subject. Most deaths were caused when creatures became caught up in waste produce. “Plastic bags don’t figure in entanglement,” he said. “The main culprits are fishing gear, ropes, lines and strapping bands. Most mammals are too big to get caught up in a plastic bag.”
He added: “The impact of bags on whales, dolphins, porpoises and seals ranges from nil for most species to very minor for perhaps a few species.For birds, plastic bags are not a problem either.”
The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.
Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian Government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to “plastic bags”.
The figure was latched on to by conservationists as proof that the bags were killers. For four years the “typo” remained uncorrected. It was only in 2006 that the authors altered the report, replacing “plastic bags” with “plastic debris”. But they admitted: “The actual numbers of animals killed annually by plastic bag litter is nearly impossible to determine.”
In a postscript to the correction they admitted that the original Canadian study had referred to fishing tackle, not plastic debris, as the threat to the marine environment.
Regardless, the erroneous claim has become the keystone of a widening campaign to demonise plastic bags.
David Santillo, a marine biologist at Greenpeace, told The Times that bad science was undermining the Government’s case for banning the bags. “It’s very unlikely that many animals are killed by plastic bags,” he said. “The evidence shows just the opposite. We are not going to solve the problem of waste by focusing on plastic bags.
“It doesn’t do the Government’s case any favours if you’ve got statements being made that aren’t supported by the scientific literature that’s out there. With larger mammals it’s fishing gear that’s the big problem. On a global basis plastic bags aren’t an issue. It would be great if statements like these weren’t made.”
Geoffrey Cox, a Tory member of the Commons Environment Select Committee, said: “I don't like plastic bags and I certainly support restricting their use, but plainly it’s extremely important that before we take any steps we should rely on accurate information. It is bizarre that any campaign should be endorsed on the basis of a mistranslation. Gordon Brown should get his facts right.”
A 1968 study of albatross carcasses found that 90 per cent contained some form of plastic but only two birds had ingested part of a plastic bag.
Professor Geoff Boxshall, a marine biologist at the Natural History Museum, said: “I’ve never seen a bird killed by a plastic bag. Other forms of plastic in the ocean are much more damaging. Only a very small proportion is caused by bags.”
Plastic particles known as nurdles, dumped in the sea by industrial companies, form a much greater threat as they can be easily consumed by birds and animals. Many British groups are now questioning whether a ban on bags would cost consumers more than the environmental benefits.
Charlie Mayfield, chairman of retailer John Lewis, said that tackling packaging waste and reducing carbon emissions were far more important goals. “We don’t see reducing the use of plastic bags as our biggest priority,” he said. “Of all the waste that goes to landfill, 20 per cent is household waste and 0.3 per cent is plastic bags.” John Lewis added that a scheme in Ireland had reduced plastic bag usage, but sales of bin liners had increased 400 per cent.
Never let the truth get in the way of a 'save the earth from Capitalists with plastic shopping bags' jihad
One naturally wonders how many environmental laws here in the USA are based on critically flawed or even intentionally 'misinterpreted' data.
FYI :-)
If it’s convenient, or makes the average person’s life more comfortable, some enviro-nut group will want to ban it and some leftist politician will accommodate the group with yet another law.
Buy low sell high ...
Nothing's cheaper than talk ... so 'talk' something up where it becomes a demand, charge people for plastic bags, VOILA! ... 'free' money.
OK ... maybe I haven't had enough coffee.
The next enviro campaign will inevitably be for paper bags to replace cloth bags. First, you have the use of all those fertilizers and pesticides needed to grow cotton. Then, you have the use of child labor in sweat shops to sew the bags, while paper comes from an enviormentally nice and renewable resource, trees, which also produce habitat for Spotted Owls.
Environmentalism is just another kind of mentalism.
There is no need to wonder. It has never been about the environment; it has been about power and the manipulation of economies. No surprise when you look at the people behind the idiots they hire to put emotion into this so as to avoid science.
Remember the crying Indian and the landfill crisis was ginned up simply as a test to measure the manipulative power of a TV Add. (See Penn and Teller - Bull——, interview with the man who created the add.)
When will the greedy Paper Barrons realize their evil plans will amount to nothing!
Erronous or not, plastic bags in Britain are a disgrace.
They are discarded in their thousands every week, and make Britain look like a litter bin.
So I support a ban/clampdown on them for that reason if nothing else...
This snippet sums up everything that's wrong with government. Who says you should ban something just because you don't like it?
DDT, Global Warming,...
Unfortunately, when politicians get involved, laws get made and stay in effect long after they are proven wrong.
Indeed.
That's never slowed them up before.
This is one of many examples where you get bad science leading to bad decisions which are counter-productive.
Like so-called global warming.
Attacking plastic bags makes people feel good but it doesn’t achieve anything.”
The definition of liberal politics.
They are discarded in their thousands every week, and make Britain look like a litter bin.
So I support a ban/clampdown on them for that reason if nothing else...
That's very interesting. So, you would support banning the plastic bags instead of increasing the penalties for littering?
Well, I dont know.
I loath banning anything,Ireland brought in a tax and that cut usage by 90%. Tax first, then phasing out the bags if that dosent work.
Of course, educating British people not to throw bags away might help...lol
Erronous or not, plastic bags in Britain are a disgrace.
They are discarded in their thousands every week, and make Britain look like a litter bin.
So I support a ban/clampdown on them for that reason if nothing else...
Meanwhile Asia creeps CLOSER and CLOSER.
For they know no fears or worries!
I loath banning anything,Ireland brought in a tax and that cut usage by 90%. Tax first, then phasing out the bags if that dosent work.
Of course, educating British people not to throw bags away might help...lol
I appreciate your reply, thank you. I oftentimes find it interesting to compare the approaches to solutions for various social ills from different countries with different economic/political / social philosophies. On the issue of littering, we in the USA had a significant problem with that up until the early 1970's when penalties for illegal dumping and highway littering were dramatically increased.....I believe that the penalty for littering on the highway can be several hundred dollars or more, as I recall. Where I live in Washington State, it's also mandatory that motorists keep a litter bag in their car, and a person can be fined for not having one (although I haven't heard of this being a common fine that's been occupying the time of Police). Although hardcore environmentalists will of course argue that we still have a 'terrible' problem with highway littering here in the USA, I think that most people would say that things have gotten considerably better in that regard in the past 40 odd years. We also have various "adopt a highway" programs where businesses and civic groups can organize cleanup activities, and I think that some states even have prisoners doing that sort of work as well.
While there of course are always exceptions, it seems that oftentimes the solutions for various social problems in Europe and the UK will first lean toward a complete ban of an offending object in question which we Yanks might consider a "sledgehammer" fix to a problem where we might instead try to work toward changing a negative behavior toward a positive one either through fines or incentives, with an outright ban of a consumer commodity being 'usually' much further down the line, if deemed necessary.
Thanks for reply.
We are actually now adopting many of the US policies you mentioned: heavy fines for flytipping,sponsored litter bins.
We have considered fines for people who overload or misload the various types of refuge bins at home (ie put household rubbish in a ‘green’ garden refuge bin, or fail to put paper in the blue recycling bin-—most houses now have three bins: brown for regular rubbish, ‘green’ for garden rubbish and blue for recyclable material-—), but that caused a storm and the councils concerned may back off of that idea, as British people found the idea of fines over their own household/garden rubbish too draconian. Esp. as many penny pinching councils are cutting back on bin uplifts, some only doing it once every two weeks!.A health hazard in itself...
I like the car litter bag idea though, lazy idiots throwing cigarette papers and even worse out of cars on roads and motorways does happen here...
Great Britain Woman in court on recycle charges (Put wrong waste in wrong bin; case sets precedent)
U.K. The 250,000 families with a spy in the bins (Test of trash cans that weigh your garbage)
It's understandable that issues pertaining to trash are going to be a bit more contentious in the UK because you're dealing with a smaller landmass area and so space for disposal is going to be at a premium. Things would likely be similar here if the USA was considerably smaller. We have the multicolored recycle bins here in Washington State as well, but that sort of thing will typically vary by city, county or State.
Regarding the plastic grocery bags, I confess that I'm puzzled over one thing, perhaps you can help. I'm wondering how the plastic bags have become a litter problem to begin with? If one traces the typical journey of the plastic grocery bag, it starts out at the grocer's where the vivacious young lass fills it with all of the goodies that you've picked out in the shop. She hands it to you with a comely smile and bids you good day, and you eventually find your way back home with it, bring it indoors and proceed to consume the contents right away or fill your fridge with it. The bag itself once empty is commonly used as a wastebasket liner, and when it's full it gets placed in the wheelie bin outside. I must say that I'm baffled as to how so very many of them have apparently gotten out onto the streets in the UK, as whenever the bag is outside it's filled and fulfilling a useful purpose. I haven't heard of any such problem with large numbers of empty plastic grocery bags littering the streets here in the USA, and I'm wondering what's going on with that that's so different across the Pond.
The problem I am talking about is usually in lay-bys on major roads, where they are left on the grass verge at the side of the lay-by by a motorist who has put little rubbish in it, it gets picked up by the winds and tossed about until they stick to a tree and get impaled, where they look awful.
Town or city wise, the plastic bag litter isnt caused in homes (except in poor areas where lazy idiots dont care about litter), any litter might be caused by businesses (shops,cafes etc) using small plastic bags and not sealing their big bins securely or having them pecked at by birds, who might rip open a bag and the contents
Stoat, dont worry,Scotland isnt a rubbish tip....lol. Although we, like most of the west, could do more to take pride in our towns and cities re litter (the younger generations are bad, the 21st century laissez faire attitude that the west seems to have about life now)
Litter is a bug-bear of mine, thats all.
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