Mayor Goff welcomes phase out of plastic bags
Auckland Mayor Phil Goff and Environment and Community Chair Councillor Penny Hulse welcomed the Government’s confirmation that it will implement a mandatory phase out of single-use plastic shopping bags in New Zealand by mid-2019.
“Removing plastic bags from our environment is great news,” the Mayor said today.
“I campaigned against single-use plastic bags and I know it’s an issue Aucklanders are concerned about.
“Aucklanders love our harbours and beaches and the bag ban is a practical, simple step which protects our environment from a major source of litter and stops hundreds of millions of plastic bags going into landfill each year.”
In Auckland, 17,000 tonnes of soft plastics were sent to landfill, as well as 200,000 tonnes of general plastics.
“We won’t reach zero-waste by phasing out single use plastic bags alone, but we will get there by if we start to reduce and remove plastic from our lives. This is a great start,” Councillor Penny Hulse said.
“Used on average for just 12 minutes, plastic bags are not biodegradable and stay in our environment indefinitely. There is a practical alternative – multi-use bags.
“The Government’s move is a good start but more needs to be done about plastic pollution.
“Container deposit legislation should be the next step as a proven way of reducing drink container litter and encouraging recycling,” Mayor Phil Goff said.
The problem is, they’re not always single use, particularly supermarket bags.
Our household almost never threw them out immediately, most were used as kitchen tidies, making them dual use.
Now we’ve started purchasing purpose made plastic tidy bags and as some varieties of these are readily biodegradable we choose those. I wouldn’t be surprised if others, however, choose a less friendly alternative.
I’ve no objection to the phase out of the bags, in fact I welcome it, but am irritated by the disingenuous use of the term “single use”. It may reflect their manufactured purpose but it doesn’t well reflect the reality of their use.