OXO-BIODEGRADABLE PLASTICS ASSOCIATION …

1 1 OXO-BIODEGRADABLE PLASTICS ASSOCIATION . Registered office The Old Exchange 12 Compton Road, London SW19 7QD, England PLASTIC BAG BANS and TAXES Many legislators are under pressure to ban plastic bags but this is a really bad For an excellent video see More and more people are realising that governments and supermarkets are exploiting our environmental consciousness to make us pay more for no good reason. Some supermarkets are charging for plastic carrier bags and saying that they are giving the profit to charity. This sounds laudable, but they are transferring the cost of the bags from themselves to their environmentally-conscious customers, and they are choosing the charity. Even if a tax is imposed there will still be very large numbers of plastic bags in circulation, and most governments have no policy for those which cannot realistically be collected, unless the tax is higher on conventional plastic than on OXO-BIODEGRADABLE plastic so as to encourage a switch to the more environmentally beneficial option.

2 Plastic carrier bags are in fact a wonder of modern technology. They can be made very thin, with minimal raw material, but are still strong enough to carry a full load of heavy shopping. No other shopping container can carry 2,500 times its own weight and stay strong when wet. A typical plastic carrier bag uses 70% less plastic today than 20 years ago. Plastic bags will protect our food and other goods from damage and contamination. They are hygienic and can be made in an almost unlimited number of colors and designs. Despite all these attributes they are inexpensive, and are by far the most cost-effective and functional solution available. The bags can also be re-used many times over for shopping, and are compact enough to be put in a pocket or handbag. They are also put to many other uses in the home, and for other uses such as clearing dog-waste from the streets, and most of them will eventually serve as a bin-liner to safely collect and dispose of household waste.

3 They are made from a by-product of oil-refining which used to be wasted. The oil is extracted to make fuels, and the same amount would be extracted even if plastic did not exist. The only problem with plastic bags is that they could lie or float around for decades if they get into the open environment, but this problem has been solved by OXO-BIODEGRADABLE technology. This is a low-cost technology which causes the plastic to degrade at the end of its pre-set useful life in the presence of oxygen, into a biodegradable material which is invisible and not toxic. It does NOT just cause the plastic to fragment. The governments of the following countries carefully considered the effectiveness and safety of OXO-BIODEGRADABLE technology before passing legislation which makes it mandatory to use the technology :- Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Mauritius, Yemen, 1 OXO-BIODEGRADABLE PLASTICS ASSOCIATION An Incorporated not-for-profit ASSOCIATION limited by Guarantee.

4 2 OXO-BIODEGRADABLE PLASTICS ASSOCIATION . Registered office The Old Exchange 12 Compton Road, London SW19 7QD, England Iran, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, and Brazil (part). These have a combined population of 195 million, and other countries will be following their example. PLASTICS factories and brand-owners will not be able to export to those countries unless their products contain oxo-bio technology. Q. What is OXO-BIODEGRADABLE plastic? A. It is normal oil-based plastic, with a special ingredient which causes the plastic to convert at the end of its useful life in the presence of oxygen into a non-toxic biodegradable material, which is bio-assimilated into the environment in the same way as a leaf. It does NOT just cause fragmentation. It is made with the same machines as normal plastic. The special ingredient represents less than 1% of the total and there is little or no extra cost. Q. Is it a good idea to ban plastic carrier-bags?

5 A. No. Scientists and environmentalists have attacked a global campaign to ban plastic bags which they say is based on flawed science and exaggerated The Times of London wrote as follows in an editorial on 8th March 2008: Analysis without facts is guesswork. Sloppy analysis of bad science is worse. Poor interpretation of good science wastes time and impedes the fight against obnoxious behaviour. There is no place for bad science, or weak analysis, in the search for credible answers to difficult Many of those who have demonized plastic bags have enlisted scientific study to their cause. By exaggerating a grain of truth into a larger falsehood they spread misinformation, and abuse the trust of their unwitting audiences. Dick Taverne, chairman of Sense about Science said3 This is one of many examples where you get bad science leading to bad decisions which are counter-productive. Attacking plastic bags makes people feel good but it doesn t achieve anything.

6 On 18th February 20114 the UK Environment Agency published a Life-Cycle Assessment which highlighted that HDPE bags are, for each use, almost 200 times less damaging to the climate than cotton hold-alls5 favoured by environmentalists, and have less than one third of the C0 emissions than paper bags. In May 2012 Intertek wrote another LCA6 which included the litter metric and concluded that OXO-BIODEGRADABLE plastic bags had better environmental credentials than compostable plastic, conventional plastic, and paper and durable bags. According to the UK Dept. for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (The Guardian, 3 October 2007) "We don't think a ban or levy is the right way to go. In Ireland, people just bought more bin-liners to replace free carrier bags, so the volume of waste stayed 2 3 The Times 8 Mar 2008 4 (1).pdf 5 The findings suggested that, in order to balance out the tiny impact of each lightweight plastic bag, consumers would have to use the same cotton bag every working day for a year, or use paper bags at least three times rather than putting them in the bin or recycling.

7 6 (9).pdf (9).pdf 3 OXO-BIODEGRADABLE PLASTICS ASSOCIATION . Registered office The Old Exchange 12 Compton Road, London SW19 7QD, England the same". Because so many plastic bags are re-used for domestic waste disposal, the following increase in bin liners and refuse sacks occurred after the tax in Ireland:7 o Tesco 77% increase in pedal bin liner sales o SuperQuinn 84% increase in nappy disposable bag sales o SuperValue/Centra 75% increase in swing bin liner sales On 8th November 2011 the Competitive Enterprise Institute of Washington DC published a paper on plastic bag bans8 which concluded Contrary to the rhetoric, plastic bans do not serve the environment, as they carry serious tradeoffs in terms of energy and water usage, and they do not solve problems associated with ocean litter. Policy makers who desire to address the real problem, which is litter, should look to existing programs that have a proven record of success.

8 Such policies may not offer the same opportunities for high-profile media coverage and credit claiming as do bans. They do, on the other hand, accomplish environmental goals without harming individual freedom, private enterprise, or the environment. The case against plastic shopping bags is based on a number of fallacies, as follows: Q. Plastic is made from oil or natural gas is this not a finite resource which should be conserved? A. PLASTICS are currently made from naphtha or ethane, which is a by-product of oil or natural gas. This by-product arises because the world needs fuels, and would arise whether or not the by-product were used to make plastic goods. So, nobody is extracting or importing extra oil and gas to make plastic. Until other fuels have been developed it makes good environmental sense to use the by-product, instead of using scarce agricultural resources, fossil-fuels, and water to make paper or cloth bags or vegetable-based plastic.

9 In fact oil-based PLASTICS could reduce the amount of oil and gas imported because after their useful life they can be incinerated to release the stored energy, which can be used to generate electricity or to heat buildings. Q. But the landfills are filling up, and we need to reduce the amount of plastic bags going to landfill. A. Plastic shopping bags occupy a tiny proportion of the space in landfill. of the contents of the average household garbage bin is plastic carrier bags .. hence a tax on plastic carrier bags alone would be unlikely to have any significant impact on volumes of waste 9 The fraction of landfill represented by plastic shopping bags is This is based on domestic waste being 17% of landfill and plastic bags being of the average garbage In any event it is likely that sending PLASTICS to landfill will be banned altogether in Europe, and should be banned everywhere.

10 In its Green Paper published on 7th March 201311 the European Commission says "From a resource efficiency perspective, it is particularly important to prevent landfilling of plastic waste. Any landfilling of plastic is an obvious waste of resources which should be avoided in favour of recycling, or of energy recovery as the next best option." 7 (Evidence to Scottish Parliament, Environment and Rural Development Committee Hearings 2005). 8 9 Plastic Bag Tax Assessment, UK Treasury, Dec 2002. 10 Packaging and Films ASSOCIATION 2007 11 COM(2013) 123 final 4 OXO-BIODEGRADABLE PLASTICS ASSOCIATION . Registered office The Old Exchange 12 Compton Road, London SW19 7QD, England A far greater impact on landfill space would be made by diverting away from landfill bricks, concrete, wood, glass and other building materials and other items such as household appliances, which occupy much more space.