The plastic bag ban is virtue signalling garbage.
The cheerleading this vacant gesture by banning singles use plastic bags has generated by many of my dear comrades on the Left feels like the same misplaced jubilation at the signing of the Paris Climate Change Agreement.
Did you know that the terrorist organisation, Al-Qaeda, bloody well banned plastic bags before NZ did? Finally getting past the Supermarket duopoly’s dominance of this debate has only occurred because they know the status quo is untenable and that by making a tiny gesture they can escape true and meaningful regulation.
The ban is purely cosmetic, it’s focused on the lowest hanging fruit without doing a damned thing to the far wider issue of plastics pollution, but banning single use plastic bags is actually more damaging than that because it creates a complacency that we’ve done something and solved the problem.
The low, low, low, low threshold of ‘transformative’ that so many on the Left are prepared to accept is why change is glacial.
The time for ‘it’s a step in the right direction’ was in 1980. Leaps are required now.
While I agree this government is developing a name for doing as little as possible it’s only a waste of time if they stop there. If they have plans to move on the next thing to ban then I’m all for it.
A couple of years ago my town banned single use plastic bags and it took a lot of effort to find supply lines for alternatives for the local shops – a lot of people went to a lot of work to make it happen. Since then we have been moving on other types of disposable plastic.
So my comment on this issue is; Congratulations on a good start – What are you doing next?
If the answer is nothing, then I get critical
Wishful thinking Bradbury! I feel similarly. But Realpolitik prevails. It took an effort to get the mass of votes for Labour to win. Another dose of the soporific National kumbaya to the comfort-living c-offs in NZ who are mostly the insubstantial substance of National support, would possibly have led us over the cliff with little hope of recovery, or for anything. Hope doesn’t spring eternal. We know that from our suicide rates for young people and their mad outbursts of domestic violence. National responds to that with a tut-tut ‘That’s not nice, decent behaviour’ and pass by with a deriding glance. The statistics of the measures that are important to the financially myopic are all they look for and see. They will keep voting National until they enter modern fairy-tale land where the story has changed and the handsome prince who kissed them lightly, also stole their fairy gold from under their mattress. The complacent conservatives take time to realise this fact, believing in magic and political theatre as a fine art.
NZ has been curbed, actually robbed, from having a free market for our enterprise and production, by crushing it with cheaper, mass or sweat-shop produced foreign goods, and foreign immigrants who recognise a crop of suckers, and know how to harvest us effectively. So full time, secure jobs have been lost, and a sneering, hypnotised and hypocritical bunch of ‘hard workers’ have formed a crust over the wounded low and no income precariat.
So Labour have been elected and are doing as well as might be expected, as a partially recovered body from the lingering malaise of the neo-lib-economic-free-market millstone that has been placed on the broad mass of the country. Know anyone with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome – I do, and it tends to hit the bright, the most persevering and active people, and limit their energy levels so that they have to ration their activity to prevent collapse. In the same way, the Labour Coalition has to set goals, and then divide them into doable sections. They could never right the mistakes and neglect in three years. What do you think about a four-year term? I think that would be most practical and its time has come, and perhaps we should have a referendum on this next election in 2020.
Some good ideas there, … and on a trivial note in response to Bradbury ,… a few weeks ago myself and an immigrant taxi cab driver were chuckling over ‘ why the hell don’t we bring back brown paper bags for crying out loud?”…
They could be double skinned and double layered handled… leading to the most superb carrying containers that are totally biodegradable.
Brown bag it !
There’s your climate change preventative actions right there for you !
Hear hear. I suggested going to paper bags to a supermarket worker the other day, no brainer. Not sure why glass isn’t used more for packaging, plastic probably easier to manufacture and cheaper to ship. Taking your own container to store to transfer deli and meats is a good start; doing the same to buy preferred brands from bulk bins would be the ideal but I can’t see manufacturers doing that anytime soon. The entire supermarket supply and retail chain is probably bound for change.
That would be the third referendum in how many years. Of the state can afford some sort of industrialized plastics programme with out destabilizing everything then why not go ahead with it. Y’know, with out the extra costs.
“The plastic bag ban is virtue signalling garbage.”
Sooooo do nothing instead?? We’re drowning in plastic shit and your complaining when a govt does at least one little thing??
https://www.perspectaweather.com/blog/2019/6/19/1030-am-now-entering-a-deep-solar-minimum-and-the-latest-forecast-for-solar-cycle-25-suggests-it-may-be-the-weakest-cycle-in-200-years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl2gg7lT7OM
changing my name to shadowbannedrick
A family I work with managed the transition away from one-use plastic bags with aplomb.
They now buy half a dozen multiple use plastic bags at the checkout, use them to carry that on one load of shopping to their vehicle, and then from their vehicle into the house, where the bags are emptied of their contents and chucked into the garbage bin.
All non-biodegradable packaging should be banned where fully biodegradable alternatives are available
Local production and short ways of transport
Yes, plastic waste, plastic packaging and all sorts of plastic wrappings and bags as a serious waste management problem could have been addressed 40 years ago.
Now, plastic packaging and bags are fully integrated into a system of concentrating production and retail as a part of cost-reduction strategies that eliminate working places along the farm/factory/market chain, as well as demand increased ‘do-it-yourself’ practices by the customer in the distribution and shopping process.
Just targeting the plastic bag as one ingredient to this system will have a very low level of transformative quality.
There is even a risk that a ban may fail if it is implemented as a legalistic, stand-alone intervention only.
The unnecessary use of plastic has to be in targeted through alternative, appropriate means of local production and short ways in the distribution of goods.
This will be genuinely transformative.
System change. Now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJaWKe4NnPY
The banning of plastic bags for so-called ‘convenience’ shopping is a major achievement and should be given the highest praise and support. Meaningful change to our untenable, throwaway, polluting society can obviously only happen in baby steps, but this is one pretty big step in my opinion. The focus must remain on this loathsome and dangerous material and irresponsible corporations whose plastic rubbish we see everyday in our gutters, on the streets, in the parks and on the beaches. McDonalds milkshake containers, straws, lollipop sticks, shattered ballpoint pens, biscuit packets, chocolate wrappers, bottle tops, takeaway food containers…it all needs to be banned, and fast. Then we need concerted global action to clean up the oceans and waterways of this horrible stuff. But most importantly, we need to target the producers of plastic, as Greenpeace are attempting to do. Stop it at the source. We’re all eating the stuff now. No point complaining about addressing poverty and inequality when our essential natural ecosystems are toxic to our wellbeing. The invention of plastic was a miscalculation, on the same scale of absurd irresponsibility as burning fossil fuels.
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