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Plastic shopping bags are not a big problem

Kazuko Nakano , a professor of recycling science at Kobe Yamate University, questions the importance of promotional campaigns that encourage shoppers to bring their own bags in an Asahi editorial:

Each year, 30 billion shopping bags, weighing a total of hundreds of thousands of tons, are given out. But unlike trash bags, shopping bags are not immediately discarded.

I once conducted a consumer survey about shopping bag use that covered about 420 households in two cities in the Kansai region. Asked what became of shopping bags after the consumers got home, 83 percent of respondents said they used them to line their kitchen garbage pails. Eighty percent used them in wastebaskets, while 43 percent reused them to hold miscellaneous items.

Only 0.8 percent threw away the bags. (The respondents were allowed to give more than one answer.)

The survey showed that most people were reusing plastic shopping bags in one way or another.

If many people will buy plastic trash bags to replace the shopping bags they no longer use, will “my bag” campaigns really do anything to cut down on Japan’s carbon dioxide emissions? Nakano doesn’t think so, and he’d like consumers and local governments to consider better options for cutting down on waste.

17 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - July 8, 2008 at 2:29 pm

Categories: General Japan Tags: ecobag, japan, my bag

eigafan

Someone’s missing the point here! When plastic bags are used to line kitchen garbage pails and waste baskets they all eventually end up in some landfill.

LB

No, because household trash in Japan is incinerated, not buried.

And even if (just for the sake of argument) the trash were being buried, if it wasn’t in a plastic bag how do you suggest it be put out for pickup? Should everyone carry their trash out to the collection point cupped in their bare hands?

Randwulf

Uhm, in paper bags perhaps?

We have yard waste pickup in our city (Hamilton, Ontario) and the yardbags are large paper bags that easily hold 30 kgs of grass clippings, etc. And they are sturdy and thick enough that even if rained on several times between the time you fill them up after mowing your lawn and you put them to the curb, they still hold together, 30 kg of material and all.

LB

1. Paper bags are a real rarity in Japan.

2. Unlike Canada, Japan is not 45% covered by forests – and even if it were, there is a huge difference between 45% of Japan and 45% of Canada. Japan would have to import the paper, leading to deforestation somewhere, which in turn contributes to global warming, plus there’s the matter of the chemicals used to process paper, the fuel used to transport all that lumber and/or the finished paper products into Japan, etc. ad nauseum. And yes, I know you use fuel to transport the oil to Japan and move the bags around, but 100 paper bags are a lot heavier and bulkier than 100 polyethylene bags, requiring more energy to move, so I have a gut feeling you’d burn more fuel switching to paper.

Wood may be a renewable resource, but by the time you get that wood turned into paper and into Japanese consumers’ hands, you will probably have used more energy and done as much net damage to the environment as if you used polyethylene bags.
Kevin

I’m not so sure about this. Think about New Year’s Cards (Nengajyou). Surely if Japan can import the materials used for printing the New Year’s cards they can do the same for bags. The bags don’t need to be white which reduces the amount of paper treatment involved, you can print on the bags using 100% soy ink, and you can make the bags out of completely recycled paper. You could probably produce all of the bags using the recycled paper from New Years Cards alone. Printing is still a huge business in Japan and paper is widely available.
The initial use of paper will still mean cutting down trees, but the paper already in circulation can definitely be recycled.
majiimeaussie

Recycle all of the nengajo and disposable chopsticks into the paper bags to use for rubbish?

Wataru Tenga

Our family generally refuses shopping bags; in fact, it’s mandatory at many of the places we shop. (Or at least you have to pay for a bag.) But it’s a losing battle. The amount of oil saved by refusing bags for one year is used up by one car driving 5 km. How can we compete with that? I haven’t had a car in 30 years, but everyone around us drives, even though we live in Tokyo and not far from shops.

Level3

Thanks for the reminder of how awesome gasoline is as a fuel. Even if you give up cars and walk everywhere, you actually have MORE impact on the environment because of the calories you need to eat and the fuel to prepare the food to get the energy to walk 5 km.

Anyway, eliminating these bags, especially since most people DO reuse them, is silly. Shouldn’t we be targetting the multi-layered, idividually wrapped packging of everything that goes into these bags?

http://surrealu.blogspot.com Claytonian

ha ha I don’t think so, level3. Where did you pick up that math, Fox news?

Level3

easy. Engineering degree.
But the ability to do basic muliplication
used to come with even a standard elementary school education.
Used to.

you get 30MPG in a small car,
works out to 50Km per gal, thus about 13km/liter
thus a 5km trip needs 0.38 liters of gas, slightly more than
fits in a soda can
gasoline is about 87% Carbon by weight
when it burns it picks up extra weight from the oxygen in air
to yield a ratio of about 3.7kg of CO2 per kg or gasoline

Thus the 5km trip at 0.38liters of gas, with a density of about 0.71g/ml (lgihter than water) means 0.27kg of gas, yielding CO2 production of almost exactly 1kg

walking 5km burns about 200 calories,
the key is that PRODUCTION of food these days is energy intensive (gasoline powered tractors, transport of the food to supermarkets, etc.) The worst case is beef needinf about 4kg of CO2 in the production process per 100g, which is enough to fuel your 5km walk.

Of course you can skew it the other way by saying the car driver has a HUMVEE, and the walker noly eats food organically grown in his own backyard. But I think that scenario is a bit…rare.

Pwned.

LB

Mathematically correct. However, you seem to be assuming that we are starting from zero. In other words, person A is at point A, and wants to go to point B 5km distant. Person A’s options are burning energy by driving a car and producing 1kg of CO2 or burning energy by walking and thus effectively producing 4kg of CO2 when we consider the energy needed to produce the food used to provide 200 calories needed to move person A those same 5km.

BUT….

If a car’s engine is not started, it produces 0kg of CO2. It only consumes energy when the engine is running.

A human, on the other hand, consumes energy 24/7. There is no off switch, no “idling stop” option. Whether person A walks 5km, runs 5km, lies down and rolls 5km down hill, or sits in a car driving 5km, energy is consumed. The amount consumed varies, yes, but we are not magically going to have a net 3kg release of CO2 not occur by driving to the store as opposed to walking.

This is called “logical reasoning”, and used to be taught in grade school. Used to.

Pwned, beeyotch.
http://www.victorymanual.com Alex

Level3: That’s all good, but Einstein is rolling over in his grave at your total disregard of time.

Walking 5KM takes about one hour, assuming you are on level ground and walk at normal pace. It takes 10 minutes to drive 5KM assuming a speed of 30KM per hour in a residential area, which by your calculations above show that the car is using 1KG of CO2 production per 10 minutes, or 6KG per hour, which is higher than the 4KG per hour you claim is used for walking. On top of that, you still burn calories while being in the very necessary state of NOT DEAD in order to operate a vehicle, so factor in to that around 85 calories per hour, which is 42.5% of what we were already using walking to the store. Invest time and save energy, invest energy to save time. It’s as simple as that.

http://whatjapanthinks.com Ken Y-N

Only 0.8% throw their bags away? That seems like a misleading figure – I would say 0.8% always throw every single bag away would be closer to the truth.

One could argue that the supermarket is a more efficient distribution point for rubbish bags as you pick them up as part of your shopping, they can order by the tonne, etc, whereas getting it from the 100 yen shop or Home Centre might involve a car trip, you are buying just twenty at a time wrapped in another bag, etc etc.

I suggested to wifey that we start My Bagging, but she wants to keep saving up until they go paid!
method

Doesn’t matter if you have an engineering degree. Your contention is still ridiculous. You’re assuming that car drivers don’t need to eat or exercise.
Wataru Tenga

Level3, we haven’t been meat eaters since the 1960s, but are you really telling people to drive rather than walk? That’s some pretty fancy math, I’d say.
Blacknimbus

If taking your own bag to the grocery store makes you feel like a better person, go for it.

It matters not a fig to the planet.

It’s a pity that this sort of nonsense gets put into law, however. If the so-called ‘green movement’ gets real traction, it will result in a lower quality of life for future generations and have no effect on the environment.

I am happy, though, that we’ve obviously progressed so far and life has become so easy that shopping bag recycling is the biggest concern of the day.
method

Hmm… my household in the US does put all its trash in plastic bags from the grocery store. We get the plastic bags from the times when we forget to bring the giant Ikea bag. We’d need a trash bag if we didn’t use the grocery bags, plus the city wants us to put the recycling in the blue bags you get from the grocery store. On the other hand, we always have extra, so we’re still getting too many bags. My guess is that in the US most people either throw away plastic bags or use them to pick up dog poop. So the actual take-away from this study is that the Japanese get an A for reuse if that number is true.

I’m amused by the number of cranks and misanthropes who post comments on this site. If you don’t think the environment is in danger, or don’t want to have to take any action yourself, just say so. Instead you get these weird sophistical arguments made in total bad faith.

Plastic shopping bags are not a big problem

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