Plastic Shopping Bags in South Australia

In the first week of May shoppers will not longer be able to get plastic shopping bags in South Australia. The reason is a pseudo-environmental one fueled by the false assumption that they cause problems to marine life. The facts behind this indicate that plastic bags themselves do little damage and it is small pieces of plastic and netting that do the most damage.

No matter, facts have never been an issue for wild eyed environmentalists or governments in general.

The simple solution would have been to mandate biodegradable shopping bags, easy to make, only a fractionally higher cost to shops to buy and problem solved. Instead the legislation is going to cause a number of problems and a few potential ones. So let's take a look at some of them.

1. Slower processing at the supermarket.

A supermarket thrives on getting people served and out the door. They do this by using a very efficient system of packing goods into a series of plastic bags, thus removing the packer we had in days long past. The new system will slow everything down. People will have to find and produce bags to pack goods into. If they don't have enough then some goods will be left and need to be re-shelved. Even at an optimum rate the packing will be slower than the current process. Any time management specialist would have spotted this one in a heartbeat.

Since the newer permanent bags are larger and sturdier many older people will be testing the weight of individual bags and in some cases will be asking for repacking since they will have trouble lifting them into theirs cars with too many items placed into a single bag (my Mother already complains about this).

A lot of people are going to get caught out and leave their items at the checkout, possibly after processing has commenced. This will cause delays, repacking times and a loss of business, particularly during the first week or two after the changeover.

2. Cross Contamination

With the reusable bag comes the issue of contamination. You load some meat into a bag and it leaks a little. The next time, the fresh veggies go into that bag and the leaked material, now full of bacteria, contaminates the vegetables and someone gets sick. The more times a bag is used and not washed or disinfected the more chance of someone getting ill or worse.

3. No Rubbish Bags - Higher Costs for the Consumer

Most people use their shopping bags for the rubbish bin as a liner. People will no longer have access to this service and will need to buy bags especially for this purpose. Rubbish bin bags cost a lot more and in many cases are not biodegradable and last a lot longer than shopping bags do. Expect some kind of backlash over this one, or expect general cleanliness in the home to suffer.

One irony is that there is no law against a shopper bringing their own plastic bag so this could lead to a market for shopping bags in packs of 100 or 1000 that people will buy or use. You can carry them in your pocket a lot easier than having those "green bags." Woolworth's for example sells packs of 5 'reusable' plastic bags for $1 a bag.

One thing that many people do not realize is that this ban applies to all types stores, not only supermarkets. So the local corner store will not be able to give you a bag, neither will any of your market stores and anywhere else where you expect a shopping bag to be provided. The scope of the impact has yet to be seen by SA shoppers. I also doubt that the SA government has anticipated all the effects of this policy.