Mark Ernst
After returning last Tuesday I saw an ‘advertisement’ at the subway station. It was announcing that from the 1st of January this year, it is not possible to get a plastic bag from the shop anymore. I was positively surprised that our government is taking action against the overuse of plastic bags. But I was also surprised because I actually didn’t hear anything about it before leaving. So while I was taking a closer look the advertisement I noticed a four-letter word that for me completely changed my opinion about this matter. It actually said: ‘From 1st of January 2016 there is a ban on free plastic bags.’ It is the small word that is placed in front of ‘plastic bag’: free. This reminded me how good we are (here in The Netherlands) in creating solutions that only work partly.
To sum up some facts first: yearly we use in The Netherlands about 3.000.000.000 plastic bags. That is an average of 170 bags per person per year (1).
So the shops are not allowed anymore to provide free plastic bags, but the customer has to pay for it. If you want to reduce the amount of plastic bags used drastically, you would expect a price of at least €2,00. If you wouldn’t change your average use, that would cost you €340 a year, which is quite some money for a lot of people.
But no. What price will the bags be? That is up to the shops. The government is advising the ridiculous small amount of €0,25, which will cost you yearly €42,50 (1). But this is just an advice and no sanctions will follow when this prices is changed. So the shops can just ask €0,01, which will actually be rounded off till €0,05. This will cost you a yearly €8,50. If you don’t care about the environment, which a lot of people don’t, I don’t think you will have nightmares in the night about these nine euros. Maybe it will create a little more awareness at some people, but this won’t solve the problem.
I’m curious if there will be any research into this the next months. Will the use of plastic bags decrease, what will be the average price of the bags? Maybe I lost my faith in humanity too much and will this small solution help us to decrease the problems. But for now I’m not convinced. I’m saying: ban the plastic bags from shops. As mentioned, we used 3.000.000.000 plastic bags in just one year. We better start reusing the plastic bags that we have. Or we make them really expensive with a tax, just like cigarettes. This money can then be used for the cleaning of plastics from nature, or put into research and development of biodegradable bags.
(1) Rijksoverheid, 2015. Visited on 05-01-2016. https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/afval/inhoud/verbod-op-gratis-plastic-tassen