Free plastic bags symptom of out-dated thinking

For people like us who work at the rubbish and recycling coal face every day, it is encouraging to hear that Daniel McCaffrey feels so strongly about New Zealand sewage outfalls, nitrate runoff and soil loss that he has moved to Australia to sort them out.

It is easy to poke fun at us for being small timers who are wasting our time working to reduce the number of free plastic bags given away in New Zealand. However the arguments used to fob us off are exactly the same ones that are used to discredit people campaigning on water quality and soil loss issues.

The Australian Productivity Commission's report on waste and resource efficiency was hotly debated when it came out in 2006. This report was a great example of the reductionist style of thinking that equates resource efficiency with economic efficiency. The approach ignores most environmental and social impacts and completely fails to take into account the opportunity cost of continuing with the status quo.

Sustainability requires the opposite. We need to move outside the 1970's economic paradigms that gave us the economy in free fall that governments all over the world are grappling with today. As Einstein said; we can't solve the problems we face today, using the same thinking that created them in the first place.

Waste is a social problem. The only way we will make progress with the big issues we all face is by changing our behaviour. Bunnings, Borders and now the Warehouse, are already streets ahead because they are building social and environmental sustainability into their value proposition. They are providing services that satisfy the people of today not the ones from last century.

John Key, Nick Smith and the GetReal campaigners all agree that 1 billion free plastic bags handed out in NZ every year seems a lot. Economists and the get real team agree that free goods tend to get overused. We would all take a lot more groceries if we did not have to pay for them.

Economic instruments are effective tools for changing behaviour. We know that we could go from 1 billion to 200 million plastic bags used each year by charging 10c each for them. That's still 50 bags a year for each of us. And if I desperately need an extra one to line my bin, I can have it for just 10c.

It is time for a return to 1970's politics so we can bring the heart back into democracy. Reductionist economic arguments are aimed at taking the citizens, otherwise known as noisy pressure groups and political zealots out of the equation. Any one that thinks plastic waste has no impact on marine environments has never researched the issue, they have never heard of the plastic soup in the North Pacific Gyre.

Real people taking action about the things they believe in can and do change the world. Taking your own bag to the shops is about showing you care about your place and your people. Ordinary people can make a difference by changing one thing at a time.

Rosa Parks made a hell of a difference just by sitting in the wrong seat on the bus.