We survived without plastic bags before now

IT was a white cotton bag, a couple of feet high, over a foot wide, and perhaps 10 inches deep (memory may be a bit vague after 65 or so years) when full, used originally for flour.

The flour went into a bin, and the bag became a useful resource — some used the soft cotton fabric to make underclothes.

One use in Civis’ family was as the bread bag, which one of the children took about three blocks to the grocer, to collect the day’s bread (the grocer kept a tab, so cash wasn’t carried).

Bread wasn’t sliced or wrapped, and ‘‘quarter white and half brown’’ was the usual order for the family of seven.

Oddly, the ‘‘half’’ looked whole — it broke into two ‘‘quarters’’, so a ‘‘quarter’’, (really a half) had one broken end — so with luck, if some of the soft, fresh bread was peeled from it as the carrier’s unofficial fee, it wasn’t obvious. The bag lasted for years.

Sugar came in jute sacks, reused to make aprons, oven gloves, and such (Civis’ Standard 3 teacher ensured boys, as well as girls, learnt how to sew them).

Smaller quantities of groceries, in that preplastic age, were bagged, or wrapped, in brown paper.

Supermarkets, seeing the future, have recently been discouraging the use of singleuse plastic carrybags at the checkout.

Now the Government has confirmed its intention to ban singleuse plastic bags less than 70 microns thick (that includes the sort other shops — not just supermarkets — use) by the middle of next year — none too soon, as oceans fill with plastic and wildlife starves from mistaking it for food.

When the ban was first announced Act party leader David Seymour, predictably, condemned the move — ‘‘It’ll lead to worse economic outcomes, jobs lost, poorer Kiwis having to buy highercost bags, and less convenience.

‘‘And it’ll hurt the planet as people are forced to use bags that have a higher impact.’’ Eh? ‘‘Forced’’?

It’s understandable that the owner of Kiwi Plastics, which faces closure, is upset.

But to say there’s no alternative to plastic — that meat in a reusable bag will contaminate other food — is nonsense.

Butchers once wrapped meat just in paper.

Single use carrybags are only part of the problem of supermarket, let alone other, plastic waste. Most bread comes unnecessarily plasticked (the bags are useful for dog walks, but that doesn’t justify it); in the fruit and vegetable section some items are already in plastic; and most supermarket meat is prewrapped in it.

Will all that be included in the ban? Apparently not: the

Government says ‘‘barrier bags’’ for meat, fish, fruit and vegetables will be allowed.

Reasonable, perhaps, for chicken (campylobacter is dangerous), but fruit and vegetables? Why can’t compostable paper be used much more?

Wrapping or bagging in paper could involve more effort, of course. It may mean employing more people, rather than machines.

Not a bad thing: relating to humans rather than machines is healthier, even if they use a standardised, sometimes intrusive, set of conversational gambits.

Running expenses may go up a bit, but recent Rich Lists suggest that supermarket ownership is a common route to multimillionaire status — and it wouldn’t hurt to correct the present imbalance between owner profits and expenses.

Concerted action by government, manufacturers, retailers, and ordinary consumers is needed to make a real difference to the volume of throwaway plastic.

Reusable containers, with payment for returning them, as in the past for beer and fizz bottles, and drinking tap rather thanbottled water (which creates 1.5 million tons of plastic waste a year) would help.

And with New Zealand unable to send its waste plastic to China (some of it seems to be dumped or burnt in Malaysia now), it needs to develop its own industries to process unavoidable plastic waste properly and safely.

The ecosystems of the world (if it survives global warming) are more important than convenience.