New Zealand is to become the first country to ban thin plastic bags used to purchase loose fruit and vegetables in supermarkets.
The new ban will also extend to plastic straws and cutlery, as the nation’s government expands its campaign against single-use plastics, which began in 2019 when it banned plastic carrier bags.
“New Zealand produces too much waste, too much plastic waste,” said New Zealand’s associate environment minister Rachel Brooking.
Ms Brooking said the 2019 bag ban has already prevented more than one billion plastic bags from being used in New Zealand, and the new ban on thin bags, which will come into force on Saturday, will add a further reduction of 150 million bags per year.
The decision was met with concerns the latest ban will not help the environment much if customers simply switch to using disposable paper bags in order to collect their fruit and vegetables.
But Ms Brooking says an investigation found “the answer was still yes, it’s still worth doing this”.
“But we really want to reduce single-use anything packaging,” she added.
“So we want people to be bringing their own bags and supermarkets are selling reusable produce bags.”
Ms Brooking said the emphasis will be on educating people but officials could impose penalties on businesses choosing to flaunt the rules.
New Zealand’s Countdown chain of supermarkets has started selling polyester mesh bags that can be washed and reused.
Catherine Langabeer, Countdown’s head of sustainability, said the mesh bags were tested to be reused up to 5,000 times each.
Countdown is working hard to get customers to think of reusable fruit-and-vegetable bags as the norm, she said.
“But we know change is hard and will take them a little while,” Ms Langabeer said. “We get some grumpy customers.”
She said other customers are finding creative ways to carry home their purchases without using any plastic.
Critics have questioned the liberal government’s environmental record, pointing out that the nation’s overall greenhouse gas emissions have not decreased since the government symbolically declared a climate emergency in 2020.
Plastic carrier bags are still available to purchase in UK supermarkets.
All large shops in England have been legally required to charge for single-use plastic shopping bags since 2015 - a move that has seen bags drop by mor then 95 per cent, according to the government. The legal charge was initially a minimum of 5p, but this was raised to 10p in May 2021 in a bid to further reduce usage.
Plastic fruit and vegetable bags are still widely available in many UK supermarkets, but some shops such as Waitrose have taken the decision to raplace them with compostable bags.
I can get behind this as a small change
I think people should carry reusable carrying nets. They are easy to carry, useful and fashionable!
I agree. Or just don’t use a bag at all. I don’t understand people who bag up their fruits and vegetables that grew outside and in dirt. What are you keeping it clean from?
I buy 14 apples at a time. I can’t wrangle all of them individually, especially if I also bought 20 potatoes and a large broccoli.
It’s also impossible to weigh them at checkout unless I have some way of grouping them. I wonder if we are going to reintroduce grocer-style fruit scales now that we are banning thin bags.
Totally. When I said bags I was referring to plastic bags. I understand the need for a bag if you are buying that many of something, just make it a reusable bag such as the netting kind.
I agree. I’m actually kind of looking forward to more vege specific reusable bags on the market.
more vege specific reusable bags on the market.
We’re in the sub-thread for reusable carrying nets. https://www.ecosia.org/images?q=vegetable bag
I use some of those light, thin, see-through nets with a drawstring. When one gets dirty, I throw it in the washer. They serve me well for years now.
What’s wrong with paper bags?
Paper bags are cool too but why not reusable ones so we will waste less.
Well the reusable ones are made from plastic.
Some are, some aren’t. There is cotton and other biodegradable material, also recycled plastic.
First country you say? I say Nay https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59843697
Here we (Kenya) banned single-use plastic bags back in 2017!!
Kuddos!
Seems like very little but single use plastic packaging is so horrible to the environment and it so low in the totem pole of priorities, it reflects the complete lack of concern for the environment by the government world over. Happy that something like this is done atleast now. Wish there was a global ban on single use plastics like chemical weapons because if we think about it, single use plastic is a slow killing chemical weapon.
I asked myself way too long what „thin plastic fruit“ is before continuing reading.
Omg me too
You know, the fruit… plastic… but thin… Great fibre /s
While in principle this is a great piece of news, reality isn’t as optimistic and I’d suggest asking questions before deciding to celebrate. When single use plastic shopping bags were outlawed, reusable bag sales went up (as you’d expect), but based on the numbers I saw, the reusable bags cause overall greater levels of emissions and refuse than the plastic they replaced.
In layman’s terms, if a 1-use plastic bag has an environmental cost of “1 carbon”, and a (bigger, heavier, made of multiple things) reusable bag has an environmental cost of “14 carbons”, the reusable bag has to be used 14 times to be a better option, but in practice they’re used around about half that many times before being damaged / thrown away.
Source: live in New Zealand and worked in a relevant part of the grocery industry until 2022.
@frankyboi Can we please stop pushing these tiny changes onto normal everyday people, when the real changes need to be made by Corporations?
I mean, I believe both needs to happen. Change is moving on the consumer end, which is good, but a lot more needs to be done on the corporate end as well.
Agreed. These kinds of bills raise awareness of how bad plastic is for the environment. We need more people going to Costco and asking, “does this really need to be wrapped in so much plastic?”
Has New Zealand banned plastic packaging for products that can be packaged in glass/cardboard/aluminum?
These thin ass plastic bags are such a miniscule amount of plastic in comparison. Let’s hit plastic where it hurts
Let’s hit it everywhere, including here.
