Who Will Rid Me Of This Plague?

[kerravonsen]

Well, I'm peeved. I got my first (and possibly only) delivery from www.greengrocers.com.au tonight. I switched to them because they said they delivered in cardboard boxes (as one of their options), and I wanted to stop getting tons of plastic bags (so as to be good for the environment). So the guy came to the door, and what was most of my food in? Plastic bags!

Interestingly enough, the veggies were in brown paper bags, but everything else was in plastic bags. So I rang up to complain. The lady on the phone said that they were required, by law, to put stuff in plastic bags because it was a "health and safety" issue, that if they weren't in plastic bags then there could be "cross contamination" and "you could get sick, and you wouldn't want that, would you?".

I thanked her for the information, and hung up, but I'm still steaming. Can't I get anybody who will refrain from giving me plastic bags?

They are better than the other folk, though: at least the veggies were in brown paper bags.

Comments

[tptigger.livejournal.com]

Can you find someone who uses recycled/recyclable plastic bags?

Not as good as say, cardboard, but better than one use ones....

[kerravonsen]

Oh, the plastic bags are recycled.

[tptigger.livejournal.com]

Australia is ahead of the US at least.

[drednort.livejournal.com]

OK - this is my department. We're among the people who come up with these rules.

Basically, I doubt you are going to find people who won't use plastic bags. The environment is important, but so is public health and safety and the health and safety rules aren't made up for no reason.

Australia has recently had to deal with a significant increase in food poisoning cases linked to fresh fruit and vegetables - this months Readers Digest actually has an article discussing it. Cross contamination - especially E.Coli O157 - is a major concern at the moment - and packaging is probably part of the reason for the increase.

We have to take this seriously.

There's also the added factor that in some ways, plastic bags may be better for the environment than paper - a reassessment that is taking a long time to filter through to the public. And it's because they degrade so slowly. Both paper bags and plastic bags contain carbon as a major part of their chemical makeup. When they biodegrade, this carbon is released into the atmosphere as CO2. If we want to reduce CO2 emissions 'fixing' carbon into non-atmospheric forms is a good idea.

Paper products are good when we're talking about things that will last a long time - like books, etc. Their less good when we are talking about things that don't last that long.

[kerravonsen]

Thank you, that does make me feel better about it, that it's not just some stupid bureaucratic rule-following thing.

The thing that puzzles me about the problems of plastic bags, which is the thing that prompted my to switch online grocers, is that the big problem with plastic bags is the marine life that they kill. What I'm puzzled by is, why are the plastic bags ending up in the sea? What is causing that?

[drednort.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is a real problem - and it comes down, fundamentally, to littering.

People don't dispose of their rubbish properly. And when plastic bags just get dumped in the street, when it rains they get swept into the storm water drains, and many storm water drains ultimately discharge into the sea. And the plastic bags with them.