Bags o' money

We are back to carrier bags again. The BBC carries a story that supermarkets hope that carrier bag use will halve by next Easter.

Again, the reporter trots out the line that "the bags... take about 1,000 years to decay". How does he know?

Also, he reports that "UK retailers hand out an estimated 13 billion free plastic bags every year." No, they don't. The cost of the bag is built into the price you pay for the goods you buy in the shop. If we are getting fewer bags, the cost of the goods should come down. Will it? What do you think?

A bag of nonsense

At the moment I am reading a book called Scared to Death by Christopher Booker and Richard North.

It is a round-up of the great panic-inducing scares we have suffered over the last 20 years from Aids to the latest global warming.

Booker and North postulate that many of the scares have no basis in scientific fact and that often scientists and governments deliberately mislead the public for their own ends be they financial, fame or power.

Today Marks & Spencer has announced that from 6 May 2008 it will charge 5p for carrier bags.

We have been told that carrier bags take 400 years to degrade. Now the BBC is running a story claiming: “Campaigners say plastic bags damage the environment. Some 13bn are given free to UK shoppers every year, and they take an estimated 1,000 years to decay.”

Both figures are complete nonsense. Since we didn’t have carrier bags in 1608 never mind in 1008, how can they possibly know?

Soon we will no doubt be reading that carrier bags take a million years to decay and unless we stop using them polar bears will die.