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Further implications
The debate around lightweight, single-use plastic bags is strongly contested. Some questions of fact are in dispute, but the larger issue appears to be one of focus, that is, which environmental issue is to be considered more important.
Opponents of lightweight plastic bags note the harm they cause marine life; supporters of these plastic bags stress that their carbon footprint is relatively small and that alternative bags are likely to have a greater effect on global warming.
In part the question is one of heightening public awareness. Banning plastic bags is seen by some as an element in educating a population about the environmental impacts of human actions.
In an opinion piece published in the Australian Humanities Review on May 1, 2009, Guy Hawkins stated, 'Campaigns to eliminate plastic bags have become a common fixture in countries where environmentalism is highly organised. Sometimes run by governments, sometimes by green or activist organizations, these campaigns focus on reducing plastic bag use by urging consumers to choose more sustainable alternatives.'
Hawkins further explained, 'Using a range of scientific information about environmental impacts Say No campaigns frame plastic bags as hazardous. And, in the same moment, they invite shoppers to engage in self-scrutiny and reflect on their everyday conducts around them.'
Hawkins argues that such campaigns are intended to be important not only in their own right but as part of an attempt to alter how consumers think about their connection to the natural world. He explains that banning plastic bags is an attempt to 'extend the ethical imagination of the shopper... reveal 'disposability' as a myth, and establish a network of connections and obligations between ordinary habits and...nature.'
However, what the plastic bag debate reveals is that the issue is a complex one. Banning lightweight plastic bags will have valuable consequences in reducing plastic waste in the world's oceans and waterways, but it will not solve the problem. Plastic finds its way into marine environments in a myriad of forms and from a wide range of sources.
Banning plastic bags may also reduce their occurrence in the landfills; however, it will not solve the problem of how to reduce and better dispose of the vast quantities of waste that human populations produce.
Greenpeace biologist, David Santillo, has said of the part played by plastic bag bans in the total debate surrounding the impact of plastic on the world's oceans, 'We are not going to solve the problems caused by plastic wastes by focussing on plastic bags alone, but dealing with plastic bags would be a small step in the right direction.
Plastic bags are one of those wasteful uses of plastics which understandably come immediately to mind for most people when they think about the problems of plastic wastes, even if bags are not primarily responsible for killing seals or seabirds. So while efforts to tackle plastic bags are not going to solve the global problems of plastic waste, they can start people thinking about the wider problems caused by plastic wastes in the oceans and on land, which result from our careless and wasteful use of plastics as materials.'
There is real concern that all banning lightweight plastic bags may do is change the weight of the plastic bag being dumped. What a number of jurisdictions that have banned lightweight plastic bags have found is that people simply use heavier bags.
The plastic bag debate needs to heighten popular awareness of the whole question of excessive consumption, short-term usage and the disposal and recycling of plastics in particular, but of waste in general.