Banning plastic bags is the right move, but New Zealand needs more to be an environmental leader

Friday, 10 August 2018

Single-use shopping bags will be phased out over the next year, according to the government.

OPINION: Halle-fricken-lujah!!!

Finally New Zealand has risen up and become an international player in solving the plastics pollution crisis.

Today's announcement by Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern that the government will be phasing out single-use plastic bags is music to the ears for long time anti single-use plastic advocates like myself.

Banning plastic bags is a good first step, Nick Morrison says, but a lot more work needs to be done if we are going to fix the problem.

They are proposing a six-month phase out approach.

I'm a huge fan of the phase out approach, because we all have to make these changes. Change is hard and change is uncomfortable. What we need to make it successful is change of behaviour.

Nick Morrison says we need strong leadership if we are to make this plastic bag ban successful.

**READ MORE:

* Ban the bags

* Why you should say Bags Not

* Improving New Zealand, one piece of plastic at a time

* New World, Four Square and Pak'nSave to ban plastic bags

We need to figure out other solutions for all the things we use single-use plastic bags for.

* NZ close to decision on banning single-use plastic bags

* Māori weavers call for kete to replace plastic bags

Plastic bag it? Biodegradable bag it? Let it decompose naturally?

* Where a plastic bag can get you jailed**

Currently we produce over 300 million tonnes of plastics globally every year. Around 40 to 50 per cent of that is single use plastics. Every year over eight million tonnes of plastic goes into the world's oceans. And those figures continue to grow every year, and will continue to grow unless we all make changes to our relationship with plastics.

So, to stop these staggering figures we need guided, helpful leadership from government and businesses that walks Kiwis through this single use plastic bag ban.

After England bought in a 5p charge for plastic bags, the sales of plastic bin liners went through the roof, and many people just started collecting the plastic woven 'bags for life' in their drawers instead of the 'single-use' plastic bags.

There was an 85 per cent reduction in the number of single use plastic bags as they were classified, but the total amount of plastic being produced hardly changed. And guess what…they had no behaviour change campaign to educate, guide or support their public through how to live without plastic bags.

I think that is failed leadership.

We've all tried to change a behaviour before. Be it exercise more, stop slamming the shower door (my current and faltering challenge), or remembering to take a bag shopping. It's hard. You forget, then you feel guilty and beat up on yourself, and far too often we quit.

Especially when it is so much easier to go to the warm comforting pub instead of on your run, or jump into the soothing hot water of your shower without slowly closing the door behind you, or turn up to a shop without a bag and take a free plastic one.

We have to learn to live a modern lifestyle without the scourge of plastic pollution, which means we need to find alternative ways for all the other bloody useful things we use plastic bags for: picking up dog poo, lining rubbish bins, carrying fishing bait. There is no denying they have made our lives easier. But at what cost? The planet is suffocating in plastics.

If we all come together and we all make these changes, we can solve the plastics pollution crisis here in New Zealand and we can show the world how it is done. We may just become 100 per cent pure.

I am applauding Minister Sage and Prime Minister Ardern for the strong leadership they have shown today with the announcement, but the real measure of success in my mind will be how they help New Zealanders on this journey of change.

* Nick Morrison is the co-founder of the Bags Not campaign and the director of Go Well Consulting. He is trying to save the world one piece of plastic at a time.