Students declare war on plastic bags

By RUSSELL BENNETT
EMERALD Primary School students want to know which will be the first five businesses in their town to go plastic bag-free.
Grade 5 students, as part of their EmFSus4Kids program, have vowed to play a role in eliminating plastic bag use in Emerald.
It’s a mighty task, but led by Emerald primary teacher Leigh Johnson and Lee Fuller from EmFSus (Emerald For Sustainability), they are up to it.
The group recently held a brainstorming session on ways to rid both their homes and local shopping centre of disposable plastic bags.
The students agreed – they had to start by convincing their parents.
“We should tell them what the plastic bags do to wildlife,” Grade 5 student Krista said.
“The bags travel through drains and out into the sea and kill animals because they go around their necks.”
Classmate Dayle came up with a pro-active way to replace disposable plastic bags, including biodegradable bags, with a reusable eco-silk version.
“We can get in groups and have a teacher with us and go down to the Emerald bakery and post office and put up signs sayin, ‘Use these reusable bags instead’,” Dayle said.
Mr Johnson was quick to point out that biodegradable bags aren’t the simple solution they’re made out to be.
“They still end up in landfill – it’s still plastic ending up in the soil,” he said.
“We only use those ones as well, and that’s the mentality we’re trying to get away from.”
Emerald Primary School collects and recycles plastic bags – helping turn them into plastic chairs and signs. And Emerald residents are welcome to drop their bags off at the school.
Students also proposed an idea that Ritchies and Woolworths set up a reusable bag exchange, where locals drop off their surplus reusable bags so that others can pick one up for free.
Discarded plastic kills up to one million sea birds and 100,000 sea mammals each year.
Australians use 6.9 billion plastic bags each year. That equates to around 310 plastic bags per year, per person. Tied together, those bags would circle the globe 42 times.