The Green Party would like supermarkets to charge 15c for each check-out plastic bag. The idea is to encourage people to bring re-usable bags and discourage the use of plastic bags.
Too much plastic ends up in the oceans and it is mostly plastic bags. They pollute the ocean. Whales and turtles eat them by mistake. They also pollute the land as they blow in the wind if people are not careful. They are cheap to make but they use fossil fuels to make them.
However, many of us find other uses for supermarket plastic bags, especially lining rubbish bins. Would we play 15c for them? Some supermarkets charge 5c a bag. Is this enough to encourage people to bring their own bags?
The ACT party, however, says that these bags are cheap to make and alternative cotton bags are costly. You would need to use them 130 times before they cost the same as a cheap supermarket plastic bag. And new plastic bags are clean. How clean is your reusable bag?
Vocabulary
• charge (v, n) – ask a price
• reusable – (adj) can be used again and again
• encourage (v) – hope, support,
• discourage (v) – make people want to stop
• fossil fuels (n) – oil, gas
• to line (v) – to put inside something (e.g. lining of a coat)
• alternative (adj) – another choice