A little while ago I read a report about a small town in South Devon called Modbury, that in a project driven by Rebecca Hosking (a freelance camerawoman with the BBC Natural History Unit) had become completely “plastic-bag free”: in other words in a first for the UK local traders had all agreed not to package anything bought in their stores in a plastic bag. Instead they are selling re-useable, and/or bio-degradeable bags - and the locals appear so far to be 100% behind the initiative. An interesting idea, and anything that cuts down on waste has to be welcomed. But does it really matter if a few more of us don’t use plastic bags for our shopping? Hell, yes…

We are of course an appallingly wasteful civilisation and one of the pages on the Modbury website, simply entitled “Plastic Facts”, is both shocking and heartbreaking. There are numerous (copyrighted) photographs of albatrosses and marine mammals tangled up in plastic waste, and a concise text. If you go to the website (and it’s worth thirty minutes of anyone’s time) here’s just a few of the facts you’ll find:

• The world uses over 1.2 trillion plastic bags a year ie we are using one million bags per minute. On average we use each plastic bag for approximately 12 minutes before disposing of it. It then can last in the environment for centuries.
• It’s estimated that over 10’s of thousands of seabirds choke or get tangled in plastic debris every year, and about 100,000 seals, sea lions, whales, dolphins, other marine mammals and sea turtles suffer the same fate, although some scientists believe this figure to be much higher.
• A Minke Whale washed up dead on the Normandy coast. Cause of death? The animal’s stomach was full of plastic bags, and throwaway plastic packaging. Some of the bags could be identified as coming from British high street shops.
• Plastic production uses 8% of all the world’s oil production At the current rate the world produces 200 million tons of plastic a year. Less than 3.5% is recycled.
• Nearly 90% of floating marine litter is plastic. About 5% of all the world’s post production plastic has entered the world’s oceans. That is just over 100 million tons of plastic.
• Plastics break down into particles known as oceanic microplastics: these are now so prolific in the oceans that they out-weigh plankton. In some large areas there is 30 times more plastic than plankton and the problem is growing fast.
• Anyone born before the 1940’s will belong to the very last generation to remember walking a beach and not seeing plastic marine debris. Anyone born after the 1950’s and for at least the next 450 years into the future will have to put up with our generation’s ever growing plastic marine pollution and the huge damage it’s causing.

One small town banning plastic bags won’t save the planet of course, but hearteningly Modbury is part of a much-larger movement. Further down the same page is a list of countries that have banned or are planning to ban plastic bags being given away in stores. The list includes such recognised environmental pioneers as, erm, Eritrea, Samoa, and Kenya. Unfortunately the list doesn’t yet include either the UK or the US.

That doesn’t mean though that citizens in either the UK or the US can’t ‘take part’. Jo and I have been taking re-useable bags when we go shopping for the last twelve months or so (and I’m one of the most disorganised people I’ve ever met: I just keep a couple in the car at all times so I don’t have to remember to pick one up). I refuse plastic bags in shops as often as I can (carrying a few bits of shopping is what arms were invented before). I take the same thick plastic bag with me on my trips abroad, so I don’t have to use the hotel’s plastic laundry bags to bring my coffee-stained shirts home. It’s not much, but it’s something, costs nothing, and is easy.

We’re all looking to do something “green” these days - and refusing or re-using a plastic bag is a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a Toyota Prius…

That website again: http://www.plasticbagfree.com