Bag it up!

It can take up to 1,000 years for plastic bags to biodegrade.

Yet, we continue to give out over a billion plastic bags worldwide every day.

Why then, isn’t the recent discussion of possibly banning plastic bags in Malaysia not treated with more gung-ho than Germany getting a kick in the goalpost in Euro 2008? Perhaps because those familiar with the perils of encouraging the use of plastic bags are shrugging their shoulders and saying, ‘Well, it’s about time,” while those who aren’t are questioning, ‘What’s the big freaking deal?’.

The big freaking deal - is that now that petrol price has gone up to RM2.70 per litre and global rates are at US$130 per barrel, we should realise more than ever the importance of reducing petroleum wastage. And the correlation to plastic bags? - It takes 430,000 gallons of oil to produce 100 million non degradable plastic bags.

Lets consider this - we’re dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the manufacture of plastic bags that we ultimately use for a grand total of one time before dumping them into the waste bin. Grand way of depleting the earth of precious resource, eh?

And that’s not withstanding the other impacts we’re inflicting on ourselves every time we use a plastic bag.

According to the San Fransisco Department of Environment, we use about 4 trillion to 5 trillion non-degradable plastic bags worldwide annually. However, because plastic bags are essentially polybags made of recycled materials, recycling it any further is difficult while burning them creates air pollution. If that‘s not enough to pour cold water over your altruistic integrity, it costs $4,000 to process and recycle 1 ton of plastic bags before reselling them for $32. The exceedingly ’profitable’ economic equation means you’d be lucky to find three people in a hundred who will lean towards recycling plastic bags.

The rest of the 97% of plastic bags that don’t get recycled end up at dumpsites. In fact, China and India are increasingly becoming targeted as Third World dumping sites for wastes of the west. We in Malaysia aren’t so irresponsible toward other countries. We just dump them into our own backyards.

If that fills up, we head to the local rivers where the flow of nature will take trash away to be filtered and diluted by the great sea.

Or will they get diluted?

It’s true that plastic bags don’t biodegrade. They photo degrade. Plastics merely get broken up into smaller fragments of plastics until finally becoming plastic dust particles called ‘mermaid tears’ or ‘nurdles‘.

Great news? Hardly. This process could take hundreds of years. And even then, nurdles are inclined to soak up toxic chemicals such as the deadly PCBs and DDE compound (from the disreputable insecticide DDT) not to mention the toxic dyes used in the production of plastic bags, all of which is then dispersed into the food chain when microscopic plastic gets swallowed by marine wildlife. Another reason to avoid the sushi, no?

But while the effects of eating plastic-flavoured fish may come to light years from now, more than a million wildlife die every year from plastic ingestion or getting caught in plastic and other debris. Endangered animals such as the leatherback turtles, harbour porpoises and the black footed albatross are especially ungrateful to the worldwide acceptance of plastic bags. They should be - most of them are now dead. With plastic bags found in their stomachs. You see, most marine creatures don’t come equipped with contact lenses. They think plastic bags look like jelly fish. And plastic particles look like food crumbs. So they eat them. Only to find that internal infections, choking or blockages in their intestines forces them to give up eating. These animals then suffer a prolonged death of starvation.

Plastic trash in oceans don’t just affect wildlife. They are responsible for beach litter, degrading commercial value of properties and hurt the fishing industry. 750,000 plastic bags were found during the 2006 International Coastal Clean-Up which took place in over 60 countries. The UN Environment Programme says it’s impossible to thoroughly clean parts of the ocean that extends 100 feet below the surface and spans the area of a continent. So most plastic bags that float easily to the deepest ends of the ocean, stay there.

Back on land, plastic bags continue to clog up drains and sewerage contributing to stagnant water and mosquitoes breeding. Indeed, who hasn’t seen a plastic bag flying with the wind?

In China, this sight has gained the nickname ‘white pollution’. In South Africa, plastics bags are all over the place, earning itself the nickname the ‘national flower’.

So, what can we do?

If we resort to paper bags, we’re just forcing trees to grow faster to feed our appetite for bags. Paper bags can be used once before usually getting stained or wet.

But lo-and-behold the reusable degradable bag!

Choose from the fashionable ones with bright colours and design or settle for any cotton tote you have. Reusable bags are already the norm in Ireland where a tax of about 20 cents is levied on the usage of plastic bags since March 2002. This tax has raised millions which is then channelled toward environmental concerns. Usages of plastic bags has also dropped by 90% - showing signs that it is a system that can be adopted worldwide.

"There certainly hasn't been an angry uprising of shoppers (in Ireland) saying we want our bags for free," says Claire Wilton, senior waste campaigner at Greenpeace-UK . "I think a lot of people recognize they are wasteful. That's why they try to save them to use again."

Other countries that have discouraged the use of plastic bags are Australia, Bangladesh, Italy, South Africa and Taiwan. Mumbai, India has banned the bags while London is hot on its heels. Several cities in United States has already banned plastic bags though a national ban has not arrived. In contrast, China recently placed a national ban on plastic bags - effectively putting 37 million barrels of oils to better use.

"Every time we use a new plastic bag, they go and get more petroleum from the Middle East and bring it over in tankers," said Stephanie Barger, executive director of Earth Resource Foundation in Costa Mesa, California. "We are extracting and destroying the Earth to use a plastic bag for 10 minutes."

The solution? Bag it up!

As a man thinketh

The recent live debate between the Opposition De Facto leader and the Information Minister last night shows that we’re clearly hungry for debates and welcome it with open arms.

People are naturally thinkers; with a billion thoughts running through the neurons of our grey matters. This is what differentiates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. And perhaps, this is why we are already famous for turning the local ‘mamak’ stall into our choice of debate hall on various issues.

If yesterday we lament the way we think our graduates are churning our memorized answers (the ‘skema jawapan mentality’) in exams, today we know we are looking for answers, not afraid to question policies thrown down at us and accept decisions with blind faith.

It is a great move toward what our friend the Australian Prime Minister calls ‘a vibrant democracy’. With that in mind, we also acknowledge the glaring power of the media to disseminate information and even influence the way the masses think.

This brings to mind the nationwide spelling bee competition that is televised on a local channel. It is interesting to see our students spell out words that even I would struggle to get right.

And while we can certainly go ‘ooohh!’ over watching students get tough words right, it would also be interesting to watch our students’ debate. I remember a debate competition I watched that was organized by the International School of Kuala Lumpur. The two finalist schools were debating in the style adopted by the US. That is – debaters were asked questions by the public or opposition after their prepared speech. The debaters must answer on the spot.

It was obvious one needed more than a well-researched and prepared speech to survive such a debate. Clearly, it also encouraged independent thinking and placed a great emphasis on knowledge.

The finalists were merely high school students, 17 years of age. And of course, the eventual winners were from the international school itself, possibly from having groomed their students to be thinkers from day one.

The question is, if we can televise a spelling bee competition, then we can certainly televise debates. Better still if the debates were by our university students (thus future Dewan Rakyat MPs) or even NGOS, political parties, lobbyist etc (in which the possibly higher viewership will bring in sponsors or advertisers).

The audience, of course, stand to gain the most from this. Issues such as development of World Heritage Sites be discussed in public and not relegated to the obscure parts of a newspaper. Along the lines, we may see the quality of debates in Parliament increase from the already fascinating yet sometimes hilarious level that we currently enjoy.

But hey, the world doesn’t have to revolve around politics. We want more people to be able to display the composure and rhetorics of the speakers last night. So, why not make debates more common?

Fueling green feelings

From a capitalist standpoint, raising oil prices was a brilliant idea. So, why didn't the oil producing nations do it earlier? Then, Malaysia, as an exporter, stand to gain loads before we run out of oil (in, what - 2015?).

The picture painted here shows a more scary picture - that we apparently get to choose between saving the economy or saving our planet. Most nations are pushing green earth policies on the back burner as we try to cope with the global inflation.

The point is - why do we need sky-high fuel prices before we realise how dependent we are on it? And if we had faced this predicament earlier, would it have increased our urgency for developing alternative fuels?

In a recent debate on the increment of fuel prices locally, one of the speakers pointed out that Malaysia's oil reserves was supposed to have ran out in 2005, yet, thanks to intensive exploration, we now have an oil company that drills and operates in 33 countries.

Which is cool.

We must have spent billions on that.

Which is also cool. Because obviously, that was the immediate problem.

I wonder how much was spent on alternative fuel.

I know we have made ventures into that. Pak Lah has ensured that our palm oil and various agricultural output be researched as biofuel.

I particularly like the way some parties put it. Not. But they did think out of the box - they thought not of oil but electricity. Just think, one day, we might have a USB cable attached to our cars (or maybe not, but fascinating isn't it? :-)

And then, there's cars fueled by water! Well... hydrogen technically, but using electrolysis (electricity=renewable energy) to produce hydrogen from water - well that's just brilliant! They called it the hydrogen vehicle (that well, uses hydrogen fuel cells). The car, produced by General Motors was aptly called Sequel (As in Fossil Fuel was the prequel, eh?).

Then last year, a Japanese car manufacturer, Genepax, introduced the car that runs on water. Simply fill in the tank with water and waalaaa! The car runs using an internal generator that does the whole electrolysis thing. It was reported by Reuters, so that's pretty exciting. Imagine attaching a hose from the kitchen tap to the driveway!

But then again, if it's too good to be true... well, you know the saying.

So that brings us back to our rising petrol prices and where we stand in the world of alternative fuels. If we knew years ago we were gonna run out of oil in 2005 (now 2015), why were we issuing APs by the dozen? Or... if the abundance of cars on our roads couldn't be helped, where's our very own durian-fueled cars?