Caption: Every year more than 100,000 whales, sea bird and sea turtle are killed by plastic bags. (Photo Source: Planet Ark )
Every minute, we consume over one million plastic bag. An estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year. Billions end up as litter as only one out of five is recycled on average.
Refer back to the situation of my home town Hong Kong, it was estimated that 27 million plastic bags were disposed of each day in Hong Kong in 2001. But recent figures show that we are using 33 million plastic bags per day now. Approximately 1700 plastic bags are used per person per year, which is four to five times the consumption level per person of Australia. I believe such dramatic increase in plastic bags consumption is mainly blame to the distribution of plastic bags with newspaper purchase, which is more or less a marketing strategy started by chain convenience stores few years ago. Small news agency and kiosks have no choice but to follow in order to maintain their competitiveness. A vicious cycle formed and it further encourages our plastic bags using habit which is disaster for our environment. Too bad.
With the emerging threat of “white pollution” (that polythene jamming and blowing on the streets) and the saturation of landfill lands within 6-10 year, our government starts to act more proactively. They started the consultation of posing an environmental tax on plastic bags (and tyres as well) in a bid to help cut demand for plastic bags.
Well, I think it is a good starting although it is a bit late to response the plastic bags problem. There has some successful case of the implementation plastic bag consumption tax. Like in Ireland, their plastic consumption reduced 90% after the implementation of PlasTax. However, one important component for their success is the Irish government spent all the money they raised from the tax on environmental conservation related area. That’s one thing I’m a bit worry about Hong Kong government. I’m pretty doubt that their main initiative and objective is raising revenue, environmental focus is only an appendix. Hopefully I’m just over-worried.
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