Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yet another furffy placed upon the good old Aussie family. What's the crud about shopping bags??? Should we be feeling guilty ,, I say NO way NEVER.
Yep , those greenie pr*ks keep saying we need to stop using those most convenient of products "the plastic shopping bag". I would assume most families do similiar to us and re-use them several times ,, carry the shopping home , place garbage in them etc.
I wonder if any of those "greenies" have ac tually travelled???? I guess they are too busy tying themselves to trees or organising share trading in carbon credits:)
Lets take a quick look just a little North of us ,, Thailand ..... yep the wonderfull holiday destination of Thailand. The ladies go for the Temples / shopping and the guys go for the ladies:) . AHH HOT humid Thailand ,, Thailand prides itself on being all things modern and is entrenched in the American food poisoning scam ,, yep McDonalds and good old Coca-cola. So lets talk Coca-cola ..... HMMMMMMMMM , well we have some 70 MILLION Thai people living in a very hot country ,, they get very thirsty and that great American "coke" arrives in cans and bottles!!!!! Well not decent Thai seller is giving up that bottle or can , so it is served in a plastic bag , complete with plastic straw and ice. 70 ,, yes 70 friggen MILLION Thai's drinking several cokes a day unecessarially served in a plastic bag and dumped on the street,..........,, do i feel guilty about my 5 plastic shopping bags per week??? nope sure don't.

Interesting Chappo....I just do my bit...I use a carton they have in a pile in the shop.

All in all....if we grew all our own food, or where organized enough to have a good barter system, these issue's might not be polluting the world.

I think if everybody was a responable and caring thinking person ( like as if that would ever happen ) then the plastic tide wouldn't be choking our wild life and our water ways, and we obviously would be living a cleaner healthy life

Jessy ,, doing your bit is all good. I do what I can also ,, by re-using the bags several times for compost collection , taking my dinner to work etc. It just worries me that Aussies doing their bit means we are trying to carry the load of a world NOT helping , it's a big world and Aussie represent a vewry small percentage. It just seems very inequitable that a BILLION Chinese can happily use plastic bags , a BILLION Indians the same , but 20 million Aussies are rail-roaded to "make the difference".
The normal "catch cry" is they are poor??? And that is a load of crap ..... China and India are full of millionaires.

I wish I had a trawler decked out to go sweeping the oceans for the plastic tide. I got the tickets.....that would be awesome

I also believe education....which even up here is only maybe 10% of children is a major factor.....

Education is the key.....but alot of people is in this world believe the world can support all this crap....and it aint true.......something will give

Plastic bag returner fee?? AHH like the South Australian return fee for bottles and cans ,, GREAT idea . That would encourage rather than punish ,, yep ..... I like it. I'd fly straight to the Thailand coast , collect , container them , ship back to Australia and retire a rich man:) Hmmm 2 Thai girl-friends, 2 Vietnamese , 2 Swedish ..... I LOVE this idea:)

What pisses me off is that Target has adopt this "green" idea and stop giving plastic bags out in the effort to do their part. But what they have started doing is that they have started charging 10cents (I think, from memory) for each plastic bag that you need...

However what's worse is that the cashier does not usually ask you whether you want a plastic bag, but just charges you 10 cents for the bag anyway... So how is that helping the "green" effort?? I think it is more like lining the pockets of the companies like Target... giving them the license to sneak an extra 10cents into your bill without your consent... And for most people (myself included) to queue up at the customer service to get 10cents back is a complete waste of time...

So go green?? More like license to charge for what used to be free (plastic bags) for what is deemed as a "green" effort in disguise...

Just exactly how many of those little plastic bags make up a pound??? Just leave it in the sun for a little while and breaks down into little pieces. While it doesn't biodegrade it won't be around as long as glass or other containers that aren't being recycled properly.
And aren't trees a renewable resource?? why aren't paper bags part of any green effort. It's renewable, recycleable, biodegradeable....
Fanatics would shut down all forms of forestry. Properly managed it is a good thing but if given free virgin forests and no obligation to replant and midigate errosion they will. Charging a green tax for the little bags is a scam, just another way of jacking the consumer into paying their overhead.

One of the main arguments was because people whinge about their precious groceries falling out the bottom of the paper bags, despite the fact that all the paper shopping bags I have used are heaps stronger than the useless plastic ones - especially those 10 cent Target ones.

Plastic bags aren't so much bad for the "environment" (ozone) as they are for animals, in particular sea life. Sea turtles feed on jellyfish, and as you could imagine, a plastic bag floating in the water looks a lot like a jellyfish. So turtles eat 'em and it doesn't pass through their system so well.

In India (Mumbai), the streams didn't flow so much as "slide" due to the effluent and plastic bags and stuff.

Water bottles are apparently reaching epedemic levels - now that drinking water is shipped in in 600ml bottles, the amount of waste produced is incredible.

The problem with not doing anything is that those "poor" countries look at us and say "Well they're rich and they're not doing anything, so why should we?" - so even though we're a drop in the ocean, someone has to set the bar.

Yeah bit like the old plastic drink can holders, remember them?

Who would have thought we could actually learn to live without em...

I can remember about 20 years ago watching my Grandmother Dora cut each ring open on one of those with scissors.

When I asked why, her reply was something along the lines of;

"if this ends up coming out of the rubbish bag at the tip, a bird could get its head stuck through one of the rings! Same if it ends up the ocean!"

wow! this is such a nice info chappo.