Talk:Plastic bag/Archives/2012

List of consumers or customers
Hi ,

where can i find list of consumers or customers for plastic bags in europe & canada ?

Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.246.211.2 (talk • contribs)

Bias
This article sounds very biased to me in favour of one particular type of biodegradable plastic. I'm sure they are very good, but I believe there are several disadvantages to this type of plastic which are not mentioned in the article. I don't have enough knowledge of the subject to fix this myself though. Tjwood 09:59, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

The article deals with both types of biodegradable plastic and I dont see anything wrong with it. If you think there are disadvantages to one or other of these types then be specific. Vague general "concerns" are not good enough. MShaw 29 Jan 2006 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.109.51.202 (talk • contribs)

I don't know for sure that there are disadvantages, although I expect there might be. As I said, I don't have an awful lot of knowledge of the subject. My concerns arose from the way the article is written:


 * Science has now found a way forward.
 * The most useful and economic of the new technologies...
 * ...“starch-based” plastics made from crops are not a preferred alternative.
 * They should all therefore be made from oxo-biodegradable plastic...
 * All these products can and should now be made...

This is not an objective discussion; you are turning opinion into fact. An encyclopedia article shoudn't make specific recommendations like this. If you want, then say "a report XYZ recommended that all these products should be made..." or "due to XYZ reasons, many think that the most useful and economic...".

Regards, Tjwood 14:51, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I would concur with Tjwood on this issue. It seems a majority of the text has been pulled straight from a website, to my mind.  Some citing and backing up of the facts and figures mentioned would vastly improve this article. Narxysus 05:45, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

This article is indeed very biased. Oxo-degradable bags are in many ways a lot worse that regular PE bags. The additive introduce in  the polymer chains fragment the plastic and leave small residues that are impossible to remove and will take just as many years as PE to degrade. Moreover, if more that 2% of oxo-degradable plastics enters the plastic recycling process, the end-product can not be used (BPI, biodegradable plastic institute, USA) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.203.42.222 (talk • contribs)

Article Improvement
I have commenced improving the article to be able to remove the NPOV sticker shortly. Mirasmus 01:09, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

there needs to be a larger discussion of better alternative to the plastic bag like using cloths shopping bags or using back packs of other bags like back packs etc instead of the enery and pollution intensive production and then disposal of the one time use plastic bag.

Some improvements made
I have removed some of the more outlandish and biased content, and tried to balance the debate a little. Oxo-biodegradable plastics are a red herring, because they use the word 'biodegradable' proudly. However, they are biodegrading carbon into nature that is not part of the normal cycle. In this way, they are as environmentally friendly as running a petrol engine or fossil fuel power station: they are realeasing previously 'locked' carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (and methane). This carbon has not been in nature for hundreds of millions of years. Biodegradable bags result in a net increase of carbon into the atmosphere, far more quickly than if left to break down as normal plastic in landfill (approx 500 years). This is not opinion, it is fact, and no, I don't work for any company or sector which has a vested interested in this matter. I'm simply interested in the claims made on this page. I will watch with interest as others amend this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Happyshopper (talk • contribs)

This can be better
I have been working in plastic bag industry for about 25 years. First, this article does appear to have been written by someone with very little actual knowlege of plastice bag manufacturing. It appears to be an opinion piece written by an enviromentalist pushing an agenda. Second, there are several incorrect "facts" and not enough information.

I am working on my own version which I will submit soon.

Takmiki 14:50, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Materials for plastic bags
Hi all, As a university student in HK, I am having a final year project on economical problems on plastic bags and the related local issues and measures by different parties. I am particularly in charge of the manufacturing process and category of plastic bags(on shopping bags mostly). Indeed I am quite impressed of the detailed written passage above, but I would appreciate so much if I can haev further details and clarification on the categorys and their comparisons (as stated in the comments, pros and cons etc). Please free to leave a msg here or send an email to angelpopo_2000@yahoo.com.hk Thanks much and I am impressed by your professionalism. Angel —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.84.252.18 (talk • contribs)

Methane and Carbon Dioxide emissions
"Compared to other hydrocarbon fuels, burning methane produces less carbon dioxide for each unit of heat released" so methane can't be "23 times more potent that Carbon Dioxide" methane is a clean gas unlike carbon dioxide. Correct me if I'm wrong... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.25.75.1 (talk • contribs)

Isn't this article about Plastic Bags? Not OxoDegradable Bags?
To address the first issue from up above, the interesting thing about the statements in this article are the CO2/methane jargon. Only if the Oxo-degradable bags are placed in a aerobic environment would it only let off CO2, if it were placed into an anaerobic environment after the breakdown parts of the hydrocarbons to fatty acids, it then would be methane gas. To address your issue of the clean gas of CO2, the problems with Methane is there is nothing to actually reduce the methane levels on the level of the reduction of CO2 being used by trees, for instance the Amazon forest, if you study the termites actually feed the Forrest as they aerobically degrade the fallen trees which give CO2 for the trees to "breathe" on. On a further note, this article needs more Plastic Information and less Oxo-plastic information. On a further note, BPI is a biased website to Green Resins, as stated in Scientific Daily, Green Resins, and PHA's cost more in fossil fuels then Petroleum based plastics, also, BPI certifies compost able measures in only a few composting facilities according to the Smithsonian article published, BPI is far from a non-biased based institution. Green resins are terrible for the environment, and they only compost when 95.8% of all plastics are thrown into a landfill, according to the EPA's MSW 2003 Report. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Callsign (talk • contribs)

Nice article!!! It gave me a lot of information. From, Jim2

Neutral
April 16, 07 I have tried to make this more neutral. Much of the political material has been removed since it is also on pages which are now linked. This should be an informative, neutral, and non-political article. There is also room for expansion. RLSheehan

Clean up article
This article should be about plastic bags which are not covered by other articles. Since plastic shopping bags and bin bags have their own coverage, these should be provided reference only, without discussion. This article should concentrate on plastic bags used in packaging. I will make these changes in two weeks. Discussion? Rlsheehan May 26, 2007
 * Accomplished, June 11, 2007

I think you have done a good job with the article. Pulling out the material that is better represented in the subarticles does a good job of cleaning up the article. My concern still is that many of the points in the article seem unsubstantiated without references to the page numbers of the books you are finding your information in. Take some other Wikipedia article, say Steam engine. Note how the books appear as references in the reflist at the bottom of the page. This is because the references themselves are included in-line with the text of the article. This is the best way to include references because it allows a reader to directly locate where in the source text you are getting your information. A good bibliography is not acceptable for substantiation of an article's facts. --Jrsnbarn 12:08, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Where are the dates?
Came looking for a history of the plastic bag. Didn't find a single date in the article. This NYT article says that the plastic bag was first introduced in U.S. grocery stores in 1977. Wouldn't it be a good idea to have some historical data? What year was the first plastic bag was made, what it was used for, and statistics on plastic bag production/use over time. That would be very interesting to know. Also, the NYT article cited above has some interesting tidbits - for example, Ireland has put a tax on plastic shopping bags (cutting their use by 90%), and Bangladesh has completely outlawed them. Smithfarm 17:45, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Polybag
The stub on polybag should be merged into Plastic bag. Pkgx (talk) 18:52, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Disposal and environmental effects
User:Rlsheehan reverted an IP editor who'd added a section on the environmental issues of plastic bags, with an edit summary of "not an improvement, discuss on talk page".

Why was this not an improvement? It could have used some copyediting and fact-checking (I've heard that more modern plastic bags degrade quickly enough not to pose a danger to sea-life), but all the content it added was clearly sourced. --McGeddon (talk) 12:32, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Some good material on plastic packaging was deleted, without any reason given. One of the new citations was from a commercial web page and was not reliable.  The other citation was about marine litter of a wide variety of sources;  Some discussion of this type of thing is found in plastic shopping bag but may not be applicable to all types of plastic bags.   There is room for more discussion about environmental issues but it must be specific to this subject and must be properly cited.    What do you propose?  Rlsheehan (talk) 12:50, 28 September 2012 (UTC)