Five billion bags a year
Every year Israelis use five billion plastic bags, which pose a threat to the environment. "It is hard not to be impressed by the Israeli national sport," writes Avi Novik, from Sheldag, a company that deals in environmental management solutions. "It begins with the collection of bags while shopping for food and ends as the most common item in the landfills. The most common carrier found in the [national] survey was plastic bags, most of them of the rustling supermarket variety."
The use of plastic in its various forms has reached incomprehensible dimensions around the world, and is causing a major environmental headache. Plastic encourages the consumption of throwaway products, 90 percent of which become waste within six months, but take hundreds of years to degrade, if ever. Tons of plastic bags are thrown into the regional landfills and constitute a great proportion of the hills of refuse. They also adversely affect the separation and recycling of the waste in the landfills and are harmful to the quality of the compost (organic waste recycled for use as fertilizer) that is produced from it.
Millions of other bags that never make it to the landfills fly through the air and pollute the streets of cities, beaches and open spaces. They create safety hazards for motorboats and cars and, as we saw, cause animals to die a cruel death.
According to the official in charge of recycling in the Environmental Protection Ministry, Elad Amihai, supermarkets and other chains make use of about 430 million bags a month, or some five billion bags a year, at a cost of NIS 50 million. The 2005 national survey of the composition of waste found that the bags make up 7 percent of all waste in Israel and that their accumulated weight is 350,000 tons a year.
No free gifts
The official data confirm the feeling that consumers use plastic bags on an unlimited scale and are populating the universe with them - so much so that the subject has reached the public agenda (see box). In Israel, awareness of the problem is quite low, even compared to other environmental issues. Even so, in the past two years two bills have been submitted in the Knesset concerning a reduction in the use of plastic bags - though not their recycling, which at this stage is not economically viable. Last November, a bill sponsored by MKs Esterina Tartman (Yisrael Beiteinu), Dov Khenin (Hadash) and Michael Melchior (Labor-Meimad) which would oblige the use of paper bags instead of plastic bags was passed in preliminary hearing. The proposal drew fierce professional criticism, since the manufacture of paper is no less harmful to the environment, and is costly, inconvenient and not practicable.
Every year Israelis use five billion plastic bags, which pose a threat to the environment. "It is hard not to be impressed by the Israeli national sport," writes Avi Novik, from Sheldag, a company that deals in environmental management solutions. "It begins with the collection of bags while shopping for food and ends as the most common item in the landfills. The most common carrier found in the [national] survey was plastic bags, most of them of the rustling supermarket variety."
The use of plastic in its various forms has reached incomprehensible dimensions around the world, and is causing a major environmental headache. Plastic encourages the consumption of throwaway products, 90 percent of which become waste within six months, but take hundreds of years to degrade, if ever. Tons of plastic bags are thrown into the regional landfills and constitute a great proportion of the hills of refuse. They also adversely affect the separation and recycling of the waste in the landfills and are harmful to the quality of the compost (organic waste recycled for use as fertilizer) that is produced from it.
Millions of other bags that never make it to the landfills fly through the air and pollute the streets of cities, beaches and open spaces. They create safety hazards for motorboats and cars and, as we saw, cause animals to die a cruel death.
According to the official in charge of recycling in the Environmental Protection Ministry, Elad Amihai, supermarkets and other chains make use of about 430 million bags a month, or some five billion bags a year, at a cost of NIS 50 million. The 2005 national survey of the composition of waste found that the bags make up 7 percent of all waste in Israel and that their accumulated weight is 350,000 tons a year.
No free gifts
The official data confirm the feeling that consumers use plastic bags on an unlimited scale and are populating the universe with them - so much so that the subject has reached the public agenda (see box). In Israel, awareness of the problem is quite low, even compared to other environmental issues. Even so, in the past two years two bills have been submitted in the Knesset concerning a reduction in the use of plastic bags - though not their recycling, which at this stage is not economically viable. Last November, a bill sponsored by MKs Esterina Tartman (Yisrael Beiteinu), Dov Khenin (Hadash) and Michael Melchior (Labor-Meimad) which would oblige the use of paper bags instead of plastic bags was passed in preliminary hearing. The proposal drew fierce professional criticism, since the manufacture of paper is no less harmful to the environment, and is costly, inconvenient and not practicable.
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The use of plastic bags in Israel developed together with the growing tendency to buy in supermarkets, which in the 1970s still looked like the American dream come true. Back then, even the neighborhood grocery store charged half an Israel pound for a carrier bag. After the establishment supermarket chains ran into difficulties and went bankrupt, collapsed, were sold, merged and relabeled themselves, fierce competition developed in which bags were customarily provided free of charge. The leap in living standards allowed the chains to absorb the marginal cost of the bags within their vast revenues, and those who had experienced the country's austerity period forsook the neighborhood stores, streamed in their masses to the supermarkets and started grabbing up the free bags. This practice continues to this day, with great pleasure on all sides.
"The Israeli consumer does not hoard bags out of miserliness but for convenience," MK Tartman says. "After all, what are the bags used for? Ninety-nine percent of them become garbage bags, and what is easier than a free bag? This is the type of behavior we are out to change. If there is chocolate on the shelf, no diet will help, and our task is to remove the chocolate from the shelf."
"The Israeli consumer does not hoard bags out of miserliness but for convenience," MK Tartman says. "After all, what are the bags used for? Ninety-nine percent of them become garbage bags, and what is easier than a free bag? This is the type of behavior we are out to change. If there is chocolate on the shelf, no diet will help, and our task is to remove the chocolate from the shelf."
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The bill says nothing about a system for collecting the money. "The law will take effect six months from the date of its publication in the Government Gazette," Tartman says. "In order to create a suitable economic mechanism, the supermarket chains will synchronize the computer systems and the public will be exposed to relevant publicity."
Will we not see another failure here, like what happened with the enforcement of the law concerning deposits on bottles?
"There is no magic solution regarding enforcement, and we have not come to chase away the dark."
How will you garner the Knesset's support for the legislation?
"Before the ministerial committee meets, I will do lobbying, because I have to get the support of the coalition in the ministerial committee," says Tartman. "I believe that they will offer me a deal so they can take credit for the law, but this time I will agree only if they undertake to move the subject ahead within 60 days. The problem with this law is that despite the consensus of values in its favor, the wars of who gets the credit might hurt it."
And if the law passes, will the MKs be able to educate the consumers who customarily hoard bags?
"Plastic bags are part of a very broad problem of use-and-dispose, and what's needed is education of manufacturers and consumers to change production methods and consumer habits. I am radical in this regard, and want to arrive at a model that aspires to manufacture only what the environment allows and what we need, and of course to distribute the means fairly."
Will we not see another failure here, like what happened with the enforcement of the law concerning deposits on bottles?
"There is no magic solution regarding enforcement, and we have not come to chase away the dark."
How will you garner the Knesset's support for the legislation?
"Before the ministerial committee meets, I will do lobbying, because I have to get the support of the coalition in the ministerial committee," says Tartman. "I believe that they will offer me a deal so they can take credit for the law, but this time I will agree only if they undertake to move the subject ahead within 60 days. The problem with this law is that despite the consensus of values in its favor, the wars of who gets the credit might hurt it."
And if the law passes, will the MKs be able to educate the consumers who customarily hoard bags?
"Plastic bags are part of a very broad problem of use-and-dispose, and what's needed is education of manufacturers and consumers to change production methods and consumer habits. I am radical in this regard, and want to arrive at a model that aspires to manufacture only what the environment allows and what we need, and of course to distribute the means fairly."
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The full article can be read at http://www.unep.org/cpi/briefs/2007Sept07.doc
