Down with plastic or styrotex bags, containers and packaging!
Whither we turn in this land over which God has given us charge, the unsavoury and disgusting sight of litter us confronts. Every time it rains, our drains, streams, rivers and coastlines instantly become clogged or covered with litter. We buy our soft drinks in disposable bottles or in disposable cups; when we are through drinking the contents, carelessly, thoughtlessly, aside we cast the empty containers: through our car windows, at the side of the road, on the pavement, in the drain, everywhere... except in a trash can.
Our official garbage trucks, crammed and overflowing, swerve through traffic, on their way to the nearest sanitary landfill, nonchalantly spilling, before they get to their destination, a quarter or more of their load onto our streets. Our unofficial garbage trucks don't do the sanitary landfill thingy at all: they simply head for the nearest empty lot, or river, or hillside and, like stray dogs in the middle of Queen's Park Oval while Lara is at bat, casually responding to Mother Nature's call, they there dump their offensive loads, without a care in, or for, the world for the disruption thereby caused.
Every morning, and every evening, for far too long, I've had the unpleasant and, therefore, unwelcome, task of collecting at least a bag of trash from the little part-grass, part-concrete roadside verge in front of my modest home: the carelessly, but deliberately, discarded KFC, Royal Castle or Churches Chicken boxes, most with the used, plastic fork and paper napkin thrown in (or, is it "thrown away"?) for good measure, the Tampico plastic bottles, the Fruta aluminum cans, the myriad printed cups, some paper, most, plastic or styrotex, but all from which some uncaring dolt once ate or drank and, having been sated, simply and wantonly jettisoned through any window of whatever passing restaurant that was somehow allowed by the Motor Vehicle Licensing Department to be cleverly-camouflaged-to-look-like-a-maxi-or-some-other-vehicle.
Some mornings, at least five times per week I would say, my trash collection foray would include the scooping up the remains of some empty Carib, Stag, Smalta or Apple J bottle which, unlike the more resilient jetsam, had morphed into jagged-edge shards of glass having suffered a shattered demise against my front fencewall.
But nothing makes my blood boil more than the sight of the carelessly discarded plastic bag, regardless of its size! which brings me to the point:
"I wonder if any one of us has ever taken the time to reflect upon the magnitude of the innocuous-looking plastic bag's impact on our environment?"
Not being able to find any official information on the topic, at least of recent vintage, I resorted quietly to doing some research on this vexing topic by sample-monitoring the customer flow at two Hi-Lo supermarkets in west Trinidad -Starlite, in Four Roads, Diego Martin and, Westmoorings, near Westmall in Cocorite- for, like most supermarkets, groceries, shops, stores, pharmacies, fast food outlets, whatever, Hi-Lo chain is "one ah dem" plastic bag freaks! Thus, 99.99% of its customers' groceries are bagged in plastic, at the checkout counter.
From first hand -and four-eyed- observation, at both Hi-Lo locations combined, some five thousand purchasing customers pass through, every day, at least six days per week. And each customer has, on average, three bags of groceries. Need I remind you? In three plastic bags (or more: due to over-enthusiastic double-bagging). Indeed, some customers exit with so many plastic bags in hand, each containing just one, or two, items, that one would swear that it was plastic bags they bought!
That works out to be fifteen thousand plastic bags per day. That translates into, on average, ninety thousand bags per week.
Assuming that customer patronage remains the same for the entire year, we are talking about four million, six hundred and eighty bags per year!
Plastic bags!
And that is just Hi-Lo at those two west-Trinidad locations! And, nationwide, Hi-Lo has how many stores? And, nationwide, how many other stores are there that are not Hi-Lo? And market vendors? And, ad nauseam?
Extrapolating from my Hi-Lo two-outlet survey, it's easy to conjecture that, in Trinidad alone, the total NUMBER OF PLASTIC BAGS GENERATED ANNUALLY from all sources (i.e. not only Hi-Lo) must, at least, be ONE BILLION! And, a billion of these bags would make a rope long enough to gird the globe four times.
Then, there's this: every single bag has ultimately to be discarded somewhere, doesn't it? Where? In the air? In outer space? On the bottom of the ocean? Where??? Moreover, even if every used plastic bag or disposable container is "properly disposed of"-which, in our neck of the woods, still means "buried in a sanitary landfill"- does anybody know how long it takes for such buried plastic garbage to decompose? Do YOU know?
Well, I'll tell you. Plastic takes a bloody long time to break down. In fact, IT TAKES OVER SIX HUNDRED YEARS FOR PLASTIC COMPLETELY TO DECOMPOSE! SIX HUNDRED YEARS GODDAMMIT!
That's why plastic, being what it is by its nature, should exclusively be used to manufacture goods which need to exist for a long, long time -such as, water lines- and not of/for goods of fleeting lifespan or usage -such as, grocery bags!
But, some may argue that these grocery bags are biodegradable. Heck, housewives would have experience on more than one occasion, a retrieved grocery bag crumbling to dust, as it were. Don't be fooled! Plastic is plastic! Thus, it cannot escape the verdict of the six hundred-year rule.
But, what, exactly, is the nature of plastic? That is best assessed by understanding its manufacturing process.
Plastic is made from ethylene. Ethylene is a by-product gas that forms when oil, gas and coal is refined. The gas -ethylene- in turn is refined and converted into polymers. Polymers are really strung-together ethylene molecules. A string of ethylene molecules is known as polyethylene (also called polyethene or polythene): poly is of Greek, meaning "many". The polythene, is compressed through an extruder into pellets -as spaghetti or dog chow also are- and sold to manufacturers of plastic products. And, the most pervasive use to which these pellets are put is in the manufacture of plastic bags.
It's necessary to note that plastic shopping bags come in mainly two densities:
- the lighter, filmy bags used by supermarkets and other food outlets. These are made from high density polyethylene (HDPE); and,
- the heavier, crinklier bags used by the likes of Detour, Catwalk etc, which may additionally have a reinforced handle, made of, yep! plastic! This type of plastic shopping bag is made from a different type of plastic called "low density polyethylene" (LDPE)
Guess you might have already been telling yourself, "Wait! this sounds like cholesterol: High Density Lipid (HDL) and Low Density Lipid (LDL): the one good, the other, bad?"
Well, if you were, you're on the right course, only that the LDPE is the "good polythene" if, ever, there could be such, in that, in two strings of similar length, there would be less ethylene molecules in the one that's of LDPE string than the other that's of HDPE. LDPE, therefore, is more flexible than its very rigid its badjohn twin, a fact which determines which PE will be used for what.
Hi-Lo's shopping bags, like most grocery shopping bags, are made of HDPE. and HDPE is plastic. And, as said before, "Plastic is plastic! Thus, it cannot escape the verdict of the six hundred-year rule."
I, therefore, say: IT IS TIME TO BAN THE USE OF PLASTIC BAGS AND STYROTEX CONTAINERS FOR THE PURPOSES OF PACKING AND TRANSPORTING RETAIL GOODS!
How so? Very easily! By slapping the consumer with a punitive Environment Tax whenever he or she opts to have their purchased stuff thus packaged. This would in turn immediately force all vendors to turn green when it comes to packaging and bagging goods sold, for customers, for their part, would have no recourse but to return to the habits of bygone days, when it was common practice for a household to use the same shopping bags over and over because they were bags that lasted a long, long time due to the type of material of which they were made. Or, to walk with your bowl when buying take-away meals. Or, for inhouse diners to be served their repasts on chinaware platters.
In addition, the revenue collected by way of such tax would assist tremendously in the restoration of our environment.
Ireland has shown the way in this regard, her government having imposed a "plastax" of fifteen cents (9p) per bag. Yes! Per bag! To be charged and collected by the retailer that hands out the bag to the customer. That was on Monday March 4, 2002. Within five months of introducing that tax, use of plastic shopping bags by the Irish fell by, get this! ninety percent! Ninety percent! During which time, those reluctant Irish who remained insistent on using plastic shopping bags, forked out over €3.5 million in plastax. (See: "Shoppers face plastic bag tax", at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1853305.stm and, "Irish bag tax hailed success", at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2205419.stm)
The question remains: can this finite, little land space of ours sustain this plastic onslaught for much longer? Or do we have scientifically thought-out and implemented programmes in place to deal with this endless stream of disposable plastic.
Whether we have yet so done or not, I believe and therefore I suggest that action has to be taken, NOW! to curb this runaway menace to our environment, and ourselves.
Surely, for the future sake of our environment, as a start, the Irish solution is worthy of implementation?
Richard Wm. Thomas,
Five Rivers,
Arouca,
Trinidad and Tobago.
kid5rivers.com 
