…the enemy is still us.

Strong, lightweight, waterproof and cheap, plastic shopping bags are loved by merchants and used in huge numbers.  They have also become a popular demon.  Around the world, cities and towns have banned them or forced retailers to charge for them.  Ireland and South Africa have imposed steep taxes on them.  Certainly, plastic bags have some bad features.  Making them takes scarce oil or natural gas.  They don’t break down when they’re thrown away, or they do break down and release poisons into the air and the water.  And they contribute to a growing amount of litter that’s dangerous to both people and animals.

The problem isn’t with plastic bags or their usual companions, plastic drink bottles.  It’s with the ideas that it’s okay to use something once and then throw it away, and that it doesn’t matter where and how you get rid of it.

In 2006, the International Coastal Cleanup removed about 14,900 bags from Jamaica’s shores in one day.  In both 2008 and 2009, the total was 19,700.  Even worse, the number of plastic drink bottles cleaned off our beaches jumped from about 24,000 in 2006 to 56,000 last year.  Plastic bags and bottles accounted for more than half the pieces of coastline trash picked up in Jamaica and about a third of collections from the rest of the Caribbean, compared with less than one fifth for countries with strong recycling programs.

The discarded plastic litter that lines Jamaica’s gullies, roads and shores certainly looks horrible.  It’s a menace to the prosperity of a nation that depends heavily on tourism.  It’s also a hazard to public safety when it plugs drains and waterways and causes floods.  It’s a hazard to public health when it breeds mosquitoes, flies, mould and germs.  And now and then a dog, a cow, a turtle, a fish or a dolphin dies because it tried to eat a plastic bag somebody threw away.

Banning plastic shopping bags and drink bottles isn’t the answer.  It’s not very practical, and it won’t make people tidy.  However, there are some measures that would reduce the number of plastic bags in use, and reduce even more the number of bags and bottles carelessly thrown away.

Perhaps the best of these for Jamaica is to have the big stores stop giving plastic away for free.  They can do this on their own, or local governments can pass a bylaw requiring it.  A small charge for every plastic bottle sold would go a long way toward supporting a recycling program.  Another small charge – like a bottle deposit – for each bag would encourage shoppers to re-use the bags they have, and to look for substitutes.  (Shopping with boxes, baskets, and string or cloth bags is a lot more efficient once you get into the habit.)

Stores that charge for plastic often sell low-cost cloth shopping bags that can be brightly printed with their advertising.  It’s encouraging to see that in Montego Bay, both the Shoppers’ Fair supermarkets and Fontana Pharmacy have recently begun selling cloth bags.  It’s a small thing, but a good first step toward a cleaner, safer, better looking country.