You may have heard the reports about plastic bags clogging up the environment, or seen neatly-written campaigns by students demanding that the government bans the use of plastic bags.
Supermarkets seem likely to start charging for these little bags very soon, and few people will want to use them once there is a price-tag on them. However, despite all these campaigns and crack-downs, there are still some good reasons to love your polythene bags.
Our Top Reasons for Loving Polythene Bags
Plastic is stronger than paper
The reason that supermarkets chose to use plastic bags rather than paper ones is simply that the former are not strong enough to carry large amounts of shopping. They are also lighter when shipped in multiples, making it easier for the shop to unload boxes of bags.
Plastic bags are reused
One of the major reasons for banning campaigns is that plastic bags are only used once. However, this is not true. Less than 1% of bags are not re-used to some purpose, for example as trash bags.
Not all plastic bags come from oil
Some plastic bags are not even made from oil, which is the most common reason cited for the ban. Many are made from natural gasses.
Many plastic bags are made from recycled plastic
The key aim of the recycling lobby is to ensure that plastic is recycled. However, there is a limit to the amount of times that plastic can be reused to make bottles and so on. Instead, older plastic might be recycled into plastic bags.
Re-usable bags may carry contaminants
Recent evidence suggests that some forms of re-usable bags are made from materials which carry contaminants including bacteria. The sad truth is that most of the bags for life are not washed or cleaned in any way, and often become highly unsanitary, with one report even claiming a 46% rise in food borne diseases after a plastic bag ban.