I suppose it is not often that we congratulate our Governments for doing something, but our South Australian Government has just brought in a great new law. From the beginning of May, all lightweight, grocery checkout plastic bags have now been banned. We now do our shopping like Grannie used to and take bags with us to put our shopping into. Some people have been quite annoyed by this ban as they had become very used to being given lots of plastic carry bags everytime they did their shopping. This resulted in over 400 million plastic bags being discarded in South Australia alone each year. They never break down in landfill, and many millions of them end up in our oceans and kills thousands of wonderful creatures each year. Some sea animals, like turtles, think they are jellyfish floating in the sea and swallow them, only to choke and die a horrible death. I for one am happy to take my own reusable bags to the supermarket to try and do a little bit to help our poor old environment. Let's hope the rest of Australia follows us with these laws.
5 comments:
Hi Christine,
That is interesting as they are talking of doing the same thing here.
On Waiheke though we do not have recycling bins, so we have to sort our glass bottles, cardboard, paper and cans in the pastic bags we get from the supermarket.
So I do not know what we will do if they are banned.
It is a good idea and I have a few of the canvas bags to take my groceries home in.
I hope that you have a good week.
My thoughts are with you.
Hugs
Carolyn
This is a brilliant idea , wish they would try it out here ! I'm sure it would only be inconvenient to start with .... until we all learned again not to be so lazy !
If you pop over to my blog Christine you'll see details of a "Makes My Heart Smile" award ; which I pass to you with Hugs :0) No obligation to complete the whole 10 nominees (I didn't ! ;0) ) Ruth X
Seems like this is the new trend. They haven't banned them here yet, but this month a few grocery chains and other stores are charging a small fee for every plastic bag you need ,if you forget to bring your own reusable bag.
Problem is the fee is so small that it isn't much of a deterrant. It's a step in the right direction though !
Ontario is like Nova Scotia, Tammy.
We have to pay 5 cents for a plastic bag, which goes to the retailers (but not enough of a deterent, I think) There has been a real push for the past couple of years towards re-usable cloth bags and I have to say most people are using them. It is becoming he norm and it's strange to see people using plastic. They should have done this a long time ago! It's nice to know it's going worldwide.
hugs,
Brenda
Hi Christine!
I hope you are well. You have not posted for long now...
I awarded your blog with "Make my heart smile" award.
Hugs,
Sophie.
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