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TechnoratiA Woman, a Village and a War on Plastic Bags
MODBURY, England -- Rebecca Hosking's moment, when a happy English farm girl cried tears that changed her life, came on a speck of sugar-white beach in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
"All you could smell was death," Hosking recalled, sitting snugly in a 600-year-old pub in her rainy home town, which has been transformed by her epiphany two years ago on Midway Atoll.
The beach on Midway, 1,300 miles northwest of Honolulu, was covered with thousands of dead albatrosses rotting in the tropical sun. In their split-open bellies, the BBC wildlife film producer said, she saw the plastic that had killed them: cigarette lighters, pens, toys, pill bottles, knives and forks, golf balls and toothbrushes.
The waves were a thick stew of dead birds that had eaten bright-colored plastic pollution they thought was food. Hosking put down her camera and waded into the waves to try to help the birds still alive. She scooped up a young one, which found the strength to bite her before dying in her arms.
"I just broke down crying because I thought she was going to make it," said Hosking, 34, rubbing the small scar on her hand. "That day has never left me."
Hosking returned to her home town, a village of 1,600 people on the Devon coast in southwestern England, disturbed and restless. She finished her film about ocean pollution and often spent her days in a wet suit snorkeling in the cool British sea.
What she saw disgusted her: plastic bags, thousands of them, from grocery stores and restaurants and every other kind of business, covering the bay floor like leaves on an autumn lawn.
Hosking, who had never been a campaigner or an environmental activist, knew she couldn't fix Midway. But suddenly she felt compelled to do something for Modbury.
In April 2007, several months after returning from the Pacific, she called a meeting at a local art gallery. She invited all 43 local merchants, most of whom she'd known since she was a baby. She tempted them with wine and food, and 37 showed up.
She showed them her film, poured out a handful of Hawaiian sand full of bright-colored bits of plastic pollution, and described the filthy bay floor three miles from their shops. Then she hit them with her plan: Modbury should ban plastic bags.
Hosking knew it was a gamble in a conservative, old-fashioned country village more into fox hunting than carbon trading. She was sure her old friends would be sympathetic, but only if it wouldn't hurt their businesses.
"If you're going to show them a problem," she said, "you've got to show them a solution."
So for weeks before the meeting, she had scoured the Internet researching alternatives to plastic bags. She found a British company selling BioBags, fully biodegradable and compostable bags made from cornstarch, which look and feel almost exactly like plastic.
She ordered a batch of them and quietly enlisted an ally -- the local butcher. She asked him to test the cornstarch bags. If he found them strong enough for his fresh, juicy meats, that might help persuade any skeptics.
At the meeting, Hosking said, all eyes turned to the butcher. When he put his hand up in favor of the plastic-bag ban, everybody else followed -- a unanimous vote.
So last May 1, Modbury became Europe's first plastic-bag-free town.
Overnight, carrying plastic bags became as socially acceptable as swearing in church. The florist tied bouquets, the baker wrapped bread and the grocery stores sold everything from olives to ice cream in bags and other small containers, all made of cornstarch or paper.
Adam Searle of Mackgill's Delicatessen said he and other merchants buy cornstarch bags and containers from a British wholesaler. The bags cost about 10 cents each -- compared with less than a penny for plastic -- a cost that merchants pass along to customers, who have rarely complained.
Searle said he sells only a handful of bags these days because most locals now carry reusable cloth or canvas shopping bags -- a key goal of the Modbury campaign.
When the ban began, Modbury became an instant sensation and attracted reporters and camera crews from around the world. Prime Minister Gordon Brown praised Hosking, and she was invited to a ceremony with Queen Elizabeth II.
Hosking said that 120 British cities and towns are exploring a ban on plastic bags, and nine have already banned them. She said two towns in Hawaii are about to follow the Modbury model.
Officials from China and Colombia have come to Modbury, and Hosking and her allies have received inquiries from dozens of countries around the world -- many via the town's Web site ( http://www.plasticbagfree.com), which Hosking created and maintains.
This week, to mark the one-year anniversary of the bag ban, Modbury is planning a big beach cleanup -- and a new campaign. Whatever item of trash residents find the most of, they will ban next. Hosking suspects it's going to be plastic water bottles, and she is already thinking about ways to promote reusable cups for tap water.
"She's very enthusiastic," Mandy Rolt, proprietor of a local gift shop that sells recycled shopping bags, says of Hosking. "She's such a likable girl. We're all behind her 100 percent."
Over a glass of wine in the timeworn Exeter Inn, Hosking said she is uncomfortable in the media spotlight.
"I'm not an eco-warrior," she said. "We just did a little thing that worked. And, blimey, it's rocketed around the world."
© 2008 The Washington Post
13 Comments so far
Show AllLook a little closer at those cornstarch bags. They are still palstic bags, just the plastic is small particles that are held together with cornstarch. The "bio-degrade" that goes on is that the cornstarch dissolves and the small particles of plastic are washed away. All gone! Disappeared!
Problem is, those tiny particles still exist and now they are small enough that krill, the smallest building block in the ocean's foodchain, now can injest them. The plastic reduces the krill's ability to gain nutrients, the fish that live on the krill, therefore, are receiving less nutrients and all that collected microplastic, on and on up the chain...the end result: skinny whales. And a weakened ocean ecology.
While I salute the efforts of this woman (they keep calling her a girl, does that seem odd? She's 34) and this town, they certainly have made a great step forward, just be careful what you settle on for a solution, it might be worse than the current problem.
My favorite line in the article is tucked into the paragraph describing the purpose of the beach clean-up effort: "Whatever item of trash residents find the most of, they will ban next."
How infinitely logical!
Here in Taiwan, the EPA (yes, Taiwan has one, and yes, it's about as effective as America's) imposed a fee on plastic bags, but it hasn't really worked out very well, because the nominal fee of NT$2 (about 2/3 of a penny in US dollars) hasn't been much of a deterrent. And of course, when you say "plastic," what country comes to mind more often than others? Right, Taiwan. A tiny island with three (soon to be four) nuclear reactors providing the electricity for a vast seaside naptha cracking plant to fuel the plastics craze.
But in grocery stores (at the very least) you do see quite a lot of people either bringing their own re-used plastic bags, scavenging from the store's publicly-accessible pile of cardboard boxes, or toting their own canvas bags to carry their goods home in. It's still not enough, of course, and I applaud the work done in Modbury.
It should be copied. And I don't think an interim solution of cornstarch bags is all that bad: consumers' mindsets don't change overnight, but the plastic bags must stop overnight.
PBS had a show on this world-wide plastic situation last week, and showed one of the skeletal remains of a young albatross on a beach with the area that had been its stomach packed with various articles of plastic, and the plastic soup our oceans have become that feeds them. I only hope this film gets shown in every class in every school around the world.
Adults may do nothing because they want their conveniences, but kids have this deep-seated need of the security of knowing not only will their parents always be there, but even more so that their world will be. This problem could be cut off at the ankles by showing the problem to the kids who'll be growing up in that nasty world we're only glimpsing now.
This is a wonderful report! Brava! for Rebecca Hosking, and Bravo/a for the butcher, the 37 unanimous merchants, and for all of Modbury. Some months ago I heard an NPR interview of a woman from, I believe, Massachusetts who was working on ending plastic bag use also. I hope that this is spreading.
Convenience plastic--stuff like bags, forks, plates, bottles, bottles, more bottles, tablecloths, hair clips, bottles, etc, which are used for only a moment, will still be around when the planet finally burns up. It is ironic, tragic, and ultimately unsolvable, because most people will never give up the convenience.
WOW!!! Can we all strive to circulate this article to everyone and/or organization we know on this planet? Suggestions, Every One, and ACTION!!!!!
Anybody that wants to learn more about what plastic is doing to our planet should pick up The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.
Here's the jist of it.....
Plastic doesn't break down in it's chemical form unless it's exposed to LOTS of UV rays. Pretty much all of the plastic that has been produced since plastic was invented is still with us somewhere on the planet today. Much of this is in the oceans and just like rocks, plastic is being ground down into smaller and smaller bits. Without exception, every ocean creature that ingests plastic can't digest it, and therefor dies. The smaller the bits of plastic, the smaller the creatures that will try to eat it. Eventually, plankton, which are the bottom of the food chain, will start to eat plastic and die. Hence the base of the food chain will take a major hit. You do the math. And we think global warming is the only thing that we need to worry about.
The cornstarch bags are a start, but remember, they won't biodegrade in a landfill. Use canvas or reuse the bags you already have. Take them into the stores. Some grocery stores even credit you a few cents per bag.
In 2002 the Irish banned the use of plastic bags: actually, they taxed them into non-use.
Plastics have been killing marine animals for years now. Do some research on the Pacific Gyre, and you will discover a huge seafill of garbage in the Pacific Ocean. Documented & anecdotal information regarding the pollution of the oceans has been around for years. Recall Thor Heyerdahl's voyage from Africa to South America & his reporting of the slick oil balls in the waters. Oily sludge has been washing up upon Florida's beaches for decades also.
Cruise ships should be required to stow their garbage until landfall. They need giant compactors & contracts w/ waste processing companies to dispose of garbage properly.
Six months ago I was living in Maui Hawaii where I became aware of cruse ships dumping their waste off the coast. Some of it made its way back to the Island, and was one of the main causes of staph-infections. My brother almost lost his leg after injuring it while swimming. The locals explained to me that there was a time when the ocean water was used to heal superficial injuries.
"Cruise ships are floating cities with no adequate plan for disposal of waste. They just dump it in the ocean. Attempts to develop legislation to control this dumping within Hawaii's waters have been stonewalled by the powerful lobbying efforts of the cruise ship industry.
Journal readers seem to see the Pohakuloa Training Area as a travesty in its own right. These islands have been used, and many say abused, by the U.S. military since the show of U.S. naval force facilitated the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom. The trashing of our sacred 'aina with bombing, toxins, hazardous waste and unexploded ordnance in order to train young kids how to wreak havoc on indigenous populations worldwide just doesn't seem to sit well with many of our readers." The Hawai'i Island Journal
Next time you consider taking a cruse or watch a pro-Navy series on PBS ask yourself where their trash and bombs end-up at.
There also needs to be a concerted effort on the part of Industrial and Graphic Designers to help change the way their clients package their goods.
It's not just the end consumer that needs to change some bad habits!
what a fantastic story. it rates along with the british eco friendly school story that was published here a few weeks ago. this could start a chain reaction.................but we still have to deal with the pollution in the seas unfortunately.
The message seems to have gotten out quite well with the help also of some large stores --- many people are carrying bags INTO the stores now . . .
Travel across the Navajo reservation and witness the scores of plastic bags hung up on the barbed wire fences, stopped in their wind driven roll and tumble across the hundreds of miles of flat arid desert landscape. Go to Hawaii and watch the plastic bags wash up on shore, blow around the beach and get caught on the palm tree trunks. Hike in the mountains of Montana and find plastic bags on the trail, coming from who knows where to find themselves lodged in the mud of the wilderness.
All these bags are made from oil--they contribute to pollution, death, filth AND higher oil prices. There is no reason for their existence, except that we have somehow, in the past 20 years, allowed their manufacturers to insidiously insert them into every facet of our lives.
Go Green--use canvas shopping bags. When they ask : Paper or Plastic? reply--niether, I have my own bags (and you can get 5 cents credit for every bag you've brought, at least here in Idaho!)