2nd May was "Bring Your Bag Day" which many supermarket chains, such as FairPrice, Sheng Siong, Carrefour, Cold Storage, Shop N Save, Giant Hypermart and Prime took part in. A survey conducted on 440 shoppers in 5 of the participating supermarket chains found that 44 per cent of shoppers brought their own bags, or bought reusable ones sold at the supermarkets while another 34 per cent paid 10 cents for each plastic bag they took, as a donation to the Singapore Environment Council for green projects. The remaining 22 per cent refused to pay for the bags.
That brings me back to my topic of bringing our own bags when go shopping. Singapore uses about 2.5 billion plastic bags a year - or about 625 bags per person each year. Most of these plastic bags are incinerated so they do not contribute to landfill. However, burning the bags releases cancer- causing dioxins and carbon dioxide and contributes to global warming. Therefore it was proposed that plastic bags be charged so as to reduce its consumption. In my opinion, this can only be at best a short term solution, the reason being that the plastic bags are priced too low to even make an impact on consumer's spending. What is more important I think, is to educate our people on the 3 "r"s - reduce, reuse and recycle.
Reducing the consumption of plastic bags will contribute less to global warming and air pollution as less of them will have to be incinerated. Imposing charges on plastic bags will only reduce consumption for a short period of time. To effectively reduce consumption over a long period of time, advertisements should be placed to educate the people. On top of that, supermarkets can give out less plastic bags, by placing more items in one bag.
Reuse. Currently, many households are already practising reuse of plastic bags. For example, waste materials and garbage are filled in these plastic bags and then disposed off cleanly. This constitutes a good hygiene practice and is the perfect example of reusing of plastic bags.
At the present state of technology, recycling of plastic bags are yet to to be made possible, but I am confident that in the near future they can be recycled just like other items such as drink cans and by then, we will be able to put these plastic bags into recycle bins for them to be recycled.
With the 3"R"s practised all the time in Singapore, we will be marching towards a cleaner Singapore rid of air pollution and less global warming.
That brings me back to my topic of bringing our own bags when go shopping. Singapore uses about 2.5 billion plastic bags a year - or about 625 bags per person each year. Most of these plastic bags are incinerated so they do not contribute to landfill. However, burning the bags releases cancer- causing dioxins and carbon dioxide and contributes to global warming. Therefore it was proposed that plastic bags be charged so as to reduce its consumption. In my opinion, this can only be at best a short term solution, the reason being that the plastic bags are priced too low to even make an impact on consumer's spending. What is more important I think, is to educate our people on the 3 "r"s - reduce, reuse and recycle.
Reducing the consumption of plastic bags will contribute less to global warming and air pollution as less of them will have to be incinerated. Imposing charges on plastic bags will only reduce consumption for a short period of time. To effectively reduce consumption over a long period of time, advertisements should be placed to educate the people. On top of that, supermarkets can give out less plastic bags, by placing more items in one bag.
Reuse. Currently, many households are already practising reuse of plastic bags. For example, waste materials and garbage are filled in these plastic bags and then disposed off cleanly. This constitutes a good hygiene practice and is the perfect example of reusing of plastic bags.
At the present state of technology, recycling of plastic bags are yet to to be made possible, but I am confident that in the near future they can be recycled just like other items such as drink cans and by then, we will be able to put these plastic bags into recycle bins for them to be recycled.
With the 3"R"s practised all the time in Singapore, we will be marching towards a cleaner Singapore rid of air pollution and less global warming.
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