Brian Rudman: Put levy on plastic bags - the planet will thank us

In New Zealand, we discard 1.6 billion plastic bags a year. Photo / Steven McNicholl

On Monday, English supermarket shoppers caught up with the rest of the British Isles and faced a 12c levy on each disposable plastic carry-bag they used.

It was the Government's way of cutting down on the 7.6 billion one-use bags English shoppers use each year.

As a way of sharply reducing rubbish, it's been highly successful. In Wales, a similar surcharge resulted in a 71 per cent cut in plastic bag use, in Scotland, 80 per cent. In Ireland, an even steeper surcharge led to a 90 per cent reduction.

Meanwhile, down here in 100 per cent pure New Zealand, we discard 1.6 billion plastic bags a year, yet the Government is happy to stand aside and leave it to the industry to do the right thing.

Actually it's worse than that. Instead of trying to alter behaviour by introducing a levy on end-users, or alternatively insisting that the polluting industries take responsibility for their own mess, the Government has dipped into its own pocket and handed the industry $1.21 million of taxpayers' money to subsidise a voluntary waste recycling project.

Why you and I should be subsidising the packaging industry to clean up the garbage it has created beats me. It's not as if it needs the cash.

This week, Packaging Council of New Zealand executive director Sharon Humphreys was proudly claiming the companies she represented contributed "approximately $20 billion to the economy".

If they're making that sort of cash over-wrapping and over-packing everything in sight, then surely there's enough in the petty cash tin to clean up afterwards.

Especially as Ms Humphreys claims her members are "leading the way in ensuring the packaging sector plays its role in sustainability".

I suspect the seabirds and turtles that die painful deaths with bellies full of plastic detritus would beg to differ.

The $1.21 million subsidy is to prop up a recycling scheme, managed by the Packaging Forum, which was launched in Auckland a week or so back.

Starting in Auckland and gradually spreading nationwide, patrons of New World, Pak 'n Save and The Warehouse stores will be able to deposit their soft plastic waste in carpark recycling bins.

Of the taxpayer subsidy, $510,000 will go towards a dry-cleaning facility in Auckland for the plastics. Initially the waste will be shipped to Australia to be turned into park benches and the like.

Environment Minister Nick Smith backs this recycling project, despite the worldwide success of levies, arguing that plastic bags make up only 0.2 per cent of landfill waste and only 10 per cent of plastic waste.

This may be true, but it doesn't solve the worldwide environmental damage the ubiquitous, long-life plastic bags that get away do to the planet.

The goal should be to halt the problem at source, with a massive reduction in the use of and our dependence on soft plastic packaging.

Instead of subsidising its re-use, the $1.21 million subsidy would have been better employed encouraging people to revisit the shopping habits of the pre-plastic era.

Auckland's Farro Fresh food chain, which was handing out more than two million plastic bags a year, is showing Dr Smith there is a better way.

They recently introduced a 5c levy on plastic bags, which I stumbled on last weekend. With only a couple of items, both already packaged, I said no to the bag, and carried them out loose to a bag in my car.

It wasn't the 5c that made me refuse a plastic bag, just the memory jog that I had about 20 in a box in the car boot already.

What I didn't realise was they also gave a 5c credit to people with a reusable bag. Last month they paid out $807.45 in credits, and issued 16,149 fewer bags. No doubt the seagulls will thank them.

Like the majority of shoppers in the United Kingdom, I didn't take umbrage at the surcharge. It was a gentle nudge to do the right thing.

In England, it's not draconian. Products that need wrapping in plastic are exempt.

Products like raw fish and meat, for example, along with uncovered blades, seeds, bulbs, flowers and, of course, live goldfish.