Plastic bags may be banned in Australia. Your thoughts?

I think that banning plastic bags in Australia would be a good idea. Then all the plastic would not end up on land fill or hurting creatures in the sea. Alternatively plastic bags could $5 each then people would bring their own material bag.

its only a matter of time and they will do this in the US too..we have a bottle deposit in some states..ten cents..but we live in Michigan and some of the states close by don't have any such law..so they bring the bottles from Ohio or another non-deposit state and make a dime a bottle ..if they don't get caught..or too greedy..our state loses millions of dollars a year this way..we have the same problem with smoking and non smoking ..some do have the law and some don't bags are free i most stores..but they are just platic ..not paper..but in Aldi's you have to either buy a bag for a nickel or use a box that the store gives away..so i just use the free box...and save my plastic bags i get for picking up my dogs poop..lol..there is a fine if you don't do this..fifty bucks

I personally don't have a problem with the banning of the plastic bag as I use my green bags or request no bag at all if I have a few articles and did not have my green bag with me. It is a habit that I have now but must say on the odd occassion I have been given a plastic bag lately, I have found that they are not very strong and have ripped easily almost losing the contents. Not sure about banning them totally as not all think like me! BUT (and I will probably get shot down for this comment!) I would ban dispossable nappies!!!!!!!!

I live in a small town in Western Australia, and our local supermarket has made it so that we pay 10c for each plastic bag used. I thought this was outrageous because sometimes shop keepers pack the bags with just two items in it, so you end up using quite a lot of bags, and also the shop itself is so expensive that even 10c per bag adds up. But the next time i went there, i noticed a sign on the bags, that said "plastic bags - 10c, all proceeds go to the royal flying doctor service". I think its a great idea now! Maybe instead of governments putting a tax on them (because we all know instead of banning them, they'll put a tax, to make money for themselves) they should let shop owners choose a charity to donate the money from plastic bags to. One thing though, I keep forgetting my cloth bags! Everyone i speak to forgets theirs too, but i guess its just something we have to get used to.

Banning plastic bags....Just makes you feel all warm inside doesn't it? Hope so, that what it's for. What about other plastic packaging? Or Fiberglass. Epoxy. Paint. None of it breaks down. It all winds up in the wastestream. Laws like this do very little, but make big splashes in the polls. So after we ban them can I roll over and go back to sleep? I guess we no longer need to worry about pollution. Yawwwwn...... Wake me up when something good happens.

I think that it might be hard but also good. I think that it will be hard because almost everything now a days come in a plastic bag. Also it will be good because there marine life i am sure tons of them die due to plastic bag a year. So it has its up and downs.

KUDOS to you! What a great plan! I just wish we would stop dragging our feet in British Columbia and get on with the program. Nothing is marring the surface of our earth more than these atrocities. Nothing is killing our native creatures more. You should see these things along the roadsides, and floating in the ocean, where I live. Not only do they leach toxins into our landfills, but the also release toxins in the air! We are just a lazy generation, and if they weren't available, we would start bringing our own! I have made myself 4 cloth shopping bags, one insulated, which I use all the time. Thank you for such a great topic.

In India they are already banned.I think it is a long time that they are banned alover the world.It is not only the environmental destruction that they cause,but also the amount of cattle they kill.The plastic bags dont actually decopmose and go into the styomach of the cows and bulls that eat grass and cause their deaths.The love for other species and also the love for the environment that we live in should make us ban those plastic bags.

Voluntary compliance is great in principle...but after seeing how much resistance many people have towards implementing change...and changing it might be better to ban them. Those who 'think green' have already made the shift away from plastic bags and towards bringing their own to shop. We have and it is a lot easier that collecting all the plastic bags and taking them down to the recycling center here in town. So I guess I'd try voluntary compliance first...and if people were not getting on the bandwagon as hoped...banning would be the next step. Raia

i think it's a great move.. plastic bags were created to lessen cutting of trees for paper bags.. now, if that solution turned out to be a bigger probem since it's not biodegradable and people does not reuse it anyway, then moving forward to another solution, for me, is brilliant..