1. Introduction

Since the plastic shopping bag was introduced in 1957, it has becomes an essential part of life today. In addition to common things like smart phones, cars or fast food, plastic shopping bags are very familiar and used by everyone in Australia. Almost all merchandises from foodstuffs and take – away food, drink to clothing and hardware use plastic shopping bags to carry.

It is estimated that people all over the world use from 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic every year (Clapp & Swanston 2009). This is equivalent to 2.7 billion every day, or 1.9 million every minute. And approximately 6.9 billion plastic bags are used by Australian consumers every year.

Plastic
shopping bags are provided by most retailers in Australia for the purpose of
helping consumers to hold their products they buy. While the main intention of consumers
is using these plastic shopping bags is to carry goods from the stores to the
car and into their home , they are often re-used by consumers for other
purposes, such as lining household rubbish bins. The helpfulness of plastic
shopping bags for their original purpose is rarely controversial. However, these
bags create unsightly rubbish, use limited resources, are one of the sources of
waste from landfill, take many years to disintegrate, cause harm to animals,
and become a symbol of a ‘throwaway’ society.

The
purpose of this research paper is to analysis existing policies about plastic
shopping bag restriction in Australia.

2. Background and Literature review

According
to Hyder Consulting (2008), there are two major types of plastic shopping bags
which are used in Australia:

• ‘Singlet’ bags, or lightweight plastic bags, made of high density polyethylene (HDPE) – used mostly in supermarkets, fresh produce, convenience stores and take-away food outlets, and other non-branded applications.
• ‘Boutique’ bags made of low density polyethylene (LDPE) – usually branded and used by stores selling higher value goods such as department stores, clothing and shoe outlets.

Over the past decade, attention of politics has concentrated on reducing the use of plastic shopping bags for a variety of reasons. They are harmful to animals and the environment and reduce the attractiveness of urban, rural and natural scenery. Plastic bags and debris of bags can stay in the environment for hundreds of years. Plastic bags are also an unnecessary consumable symbol. There are a number of suggestions proposed to reduce or stop the use of plastic bags, including plastic bags, introducing levy a tax on manufacture of plastic bags and using alternatives, with strengths and weaknesses. For example, according to Hyder Consulting (2008), recent alternative replacement life cycles for plastic bags, such as the current generation of decomposers, have found a number of alternatives that have a greater impact on environment in comparison with lightweight plastic bags.

There
are some reasons why it has been suggested that plastic shopping bags should be
reduced. Halweil (2004) indicated that man people consider plastic shopping
bags as a waste of natural resources because they are made from non-renewable
resources, such as crude oil, natural gas and other petro chemical derivatives,
are normally unnecessary. And Williams (2004) argued that in a lot of
situations, many people use plastic shopping bags only one time. In addtion,
according to Hyder Consulting (2008), there is a key reason for the
depreciation of plastic shopping bags. It is that millions of them are not
thrown away properly and they become unsightly litter which can live long on
land or in the water for hundreds of years. While nearly 30-40 million plastic
shopping bags were littered in 2007, the Keep Australia Beautiful National
Litter Index 2006/2007 showed that HDPE plastic bags accounted for only 1.3% of
the litter stream by item (excluding cigarette butts) and 0.18% of the litter
stream by volume (excluding cigarette butts). It was found that “beaches had
the most plastic bags, of the beaches surveyed by keep Australia Beautiful, 2.9
plastic bags were found per 1,000 square metres” (Hyder Consulting 2008, p.
22).

Another
reason for the need to reduce plastic shopping bags is that they are dangerous
to wildlife. Jefic, Sheavly and Adler (2009) pointed out that plastic shopping
bags can do harm or kill flora and fauna that eat, or become entangled in them.
Williams (2004) gave an example that turtles died due to ingesting plastic
bags, most likely the plastic bags look like jellyfish floating in the water.
Another example is that a crocodile which was caught at Magnetic Island in
Queensland in October 2008 died because of eating plastic bags, which were
stuck in its stomach, meaning it could not digest its food. Its necropsy
revealed “25 plastic shopping abd garbage bags, a plastic wine cooler bag and a
rubber float in its stomach” (Queensland Government 2008). In addtion,
Sustainability Victoria (2010) illustrated plastic shopping bags as “a short
term convenience with long term impacts”. In spite of the fact that plastic
shopping bags are made to be “single use”, Lapidos (2007) considered that
plastic shopping bags have a life expectancy of up to 1,000 years. Moreover,
many people think that plastic shopping bags are symbolic of wasteful society.
The Hon Jane Davidson AM, the Welsh Environment Minister (2009) described
plastic shopping bags as “an iconic symbol of the throw-away society we now
seem to live in”. Wilton (cited in Williams 2004), a waste campaigner for
Friends of the Earth in London, also said “plastic carrier bags are symbolic of
a society in which we use things without thinking and then throw them away”.
And according to Caroline Williams in New Scientist in 2004, the plastic bag
industry claimed that it is being targeted by environmentalists because plastic
bags are “ an easy and emotive target that panders to our guilt about general
environmental irresponsibility”.

3. Problem definition

People
living in Australia use approximately 6.9 billion new plastic shopping bags
each year. In other words, each person use one bag in a day. The problems of
plastic shopping bags are determined by two factors that are almost certainly
equally important. First of all, there are concerns about the environmental
impacts of plastic shopping bags, especially impacts on the consumption of
resources and litter.

Lewis
et al. (2002) stated that the manufacture of 6.9 billion plastic shopping bags
utilizes approximately 36850 tonnes of plastic, or 2% of total plastics
produced in Australia each year. This is a slight percentage of the entire
amount of packaging used in Australia every year, which is estimated to be
around 3 million tonnes 1 . There is an estimation that plastic shopping bags
account for 2.02% of all items in the litter stream. However, they pose actual
ecological impacts and threats and as such need to be effectively addressed
together with other components of the litter stream.

The
second factor that are necessary to be aware of in the argument about plastic shopping
bags is symbolic value. The plastics and packaging industries are under extreme
pressure in the 1970s and 1980s because ‘they had become a politically
incorrect symbol of the threat to the environment’ (Byars 1995). A cultural
analysis of plastics in the United States indicated  that by definition the plastics industry was
the whole thing which activists in ecology wanted to delete from the American
experience. Since the early twentieth century, people who promote the industrial
chemistry and synthetic materials had bragged of going beyond age-old limits of
provisional materials by spreading the control of science over nature. During
the 1920s, predictions of a developing flow of low-cost man-made goods had
suggested material plenty as the foundation for a utopian social equality. By
the final third of the century that transcendency threatened to drain natural
resources and contaminate the society that supported it by creating a stream of
irretrievable, unacceptable materials – rubbish, society’s excrement. (Meikle
1995). To some extent the concerns about the large number of plastic shopping
bags, which are used by people living in Australia, and their high level of
visibility in domestic waste and litter, are characteristic of much wider
concerns about plastics and packaging.

This
does not mean that concerns about plastic shopping bags are any less crucial or
demanding from a policy viewpoint. However, it has the meaning that the growth
of policy solutions needs to consider the issues of society and culture as well
as the facts of science about impacts on the environment. Policy measures to
decrease utilization (or impacts) of shopping bags are to be expected to be
well received in the community. Abundant measures to solve the plastic bag
problem have been increased in recent times. These measures are various and
include factors, such as legislated measures like levies and bans; voluntary
measures such as retailer originated actions and developed Code of Practice;
raised consumer education; and expanded recovery and recycling.

4. Existing Policies

The
policy “Phase-out of lightweight plastic bags in Australia” is being followed
at local and state/territory level rather than nationally. In this policy,
plastic bag bans are implemented or undecided in all states and territories
except New South Wales. Cormack (2016) noted that environmental groups have
expressed their interest that Australia was falling behind other countries in
the “phase-out of lightweight plastic bags”, including Botswana, Somalia and
Tanzania. The author also indicated that of the 5 billion plastic bags consumed
every year by Australians, 150 million finished as litter.

According
to Mail & Guardian in 2003, the Tasmanian town of Coles Bay was the first
location in Australia to ban plastic bags. Feneley (2008) stated that even
though the Rudd Government’s goal of a national plastic bag ban by year’s end
was publicized by the then-Environment Minister Peter Garrett, he later stop
initiative because of cost of living concerns and disagreement about the policy
among state and territory governments. This is the reason why states and
territories carried out their own approaches.

The
initiation of the “Zero Waste” program in South Australia led to the first
statewide lightweight bag ban being, which was introduced in October 2008. It
is estimated that this move has saved 400 million bags every year (Zero Waste
South Australia 2011). Preiss (2017) pointed out that the most recent
jurisdiction to pronounce a ban on plastic bags is Victoria, to commence on a
date to be pulicized in early 2018.

 On 1 November 2011, following a transition
period of four months, plastic bags were prohibited in the Australian Capital
Territory under the Plastic Shopping Bags Ban Act 2010. The provisions of the
Act mirror the South Australia legislation. The Act was carried out in combination
with a complete community and retailer engagement and campaign of education.

On
16 April 2013, Getting Full Value: The Victorian Waste and Resource Recovery
Policy was released by the Victorian Government. The policy commits the
Government to work under the National Waste Policy and Australian Packaging
Covenant to control packaging waste, which contains lightweight plastic bags.

In
July 2017, Coles and Woolworths, which are two largest supermarkets in the
country, announced that from July 2018 they will voluntarily take away free
lightweight plastic bags from their stores and provide bags, which can be
reuseable instead. These bags were originally sold at 15 cents in both Coles
and Woolworths.

5. Evaluation existing policies

The “phase-out of lightweight
plastic bags in Australia” can be seen as an
effective and easy way of reducing the amount of plastic entering the land and
the marine environment. Keep Australia Beautiful’s national report for
2016-2017 showed a fall in plastic bag litter after plastic bags came into
effect. Besides, plastic bags are offen mistaken for food by marine animals. As
Williams (2004) mentioned that turtles died beause of eating plastic bags. Therefore,
the plastic shopping bags ban can help to decrease negative impacts on animals.
Moreover, bcecause plastic bags take hundreds of years to decompose, banning
plastic shopping bags will help to protect the environment.

One aspect that needs to be
addressed when banning plastic shopping bags is relevance. Plastic shopping bag
ban can be useful in short term. Professor Sami Kara from the University of New
South Wales said that it is better in the long term if people do not use
plastic bags at all. However, it is very difficult to stop everyone from using
plastic shopping bags. Because people are now accustomed to using plastic
shopping bags, it will be a big challenge to change that long-term behaviour of
consumers. Therefore, banning plastic shopping bags are relevant in the short
term.

There are some alternatives
to plastic bags. However, these can lead to some side-effects. Chung
(2017) indicated that a side-effect of the plastic bag ban noticed in South
Australia was the growth in the number of bin
liners, which have a greater impact on the
environment than plastic bags because they can not break down well in modern
landfills. The author also stated that alternatives, which are environmentally
friendly recommended instead of bin liners are composting food
scraps and using free community newspapers as
liners instead.

Adler (2016) pointed out that paper bags
were not as environmentally friendly as plastic bags because of a higher carbon footprint. In
the same way, bags made by cotton were inappropriate due to the high level
using of the pesticides and high volume of water, which are necessary to
produce them. The “greenest” option was to consume recycled plastic
bags.

Concern has been expressed about potentially
unintentional adverse health outcomes related to the plastic bag ban rollout
because of the insufficient care by consumers in keeping alternative shopping
bags in a clean and healthy condition. It is indicated that experiences of
oversea in locations such as San
Francisco, where raise sickness and even deaths were
reported in the consequences of the same bans to those in Australian states,
recommend that this is a real concern (Knaus 2013).

6. Conclusion

The Environment Protection and Heritage
Council indicated that plastic shopping bags “are popular with consumers and
retailers because they provide a convenient, highly functional, lightweight,
strong, cheap, hygienic way to transport food and other products”. These
comment means that several plastic shopping bags are reused for many other
purposes, such as storing sweaty gym gear, packing shoes, collecting dog poo
and holding rubbish.

 In
spite of these usefulness of plastic shopping bags, they have various negative
effects. Therefore, there are polices provided to ban plastic shopping bags. The
polices of banning plastic shopping bags were provided in South Australia,
Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and the two largest supermarkets in
Australia applied this policy to reduce the number of plastic shopping bags.
These policies bring some effectiveness, positive impacts and relevance in the
short term. However, in consideration of the long term, banning plastic
shopping bags is not appropriate. And the policies of plastic bags ban result
in alternatives, which have some side-effects.

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