In his letter The Use Of Plastic Bags (December 22), Ramon Casha is more than correct in his statements. I have to add that with the removal of plastic bags “with handles”, the amount of plastic (as a raw material) has not remained the same but has definitively increased due to the simple fact that normal garbage bags, black or any other colour, are produced in thicker plastic, close to double the weight of a normal plastic carrier bag “with handles”, and besides the sizes are up to eight times larger. One must also point out that plastic bags with handles have now been replaced with plastic bags “without handles”.

While plastic carrier bags “with handles” were being manufactured in degradable plastic and were therefore environmentally responsible, the plastic bags “without handles” which have now taken the place of the traditional plastic carrier bags are manufactured in normal plastic as these fly under the radar, therefore being non-environmentally responsible. But it seems that the environmental culprit was the handles and not the technology. I wonder if Malta will ever be given a prize for this great environmental discovery. I also wonder if all taxes are being collected on all the bags “without handles”.

The Malta Standards Authority (MSA) had also initiated and standardised a Maltese Technical Specification on Degradable Plastic, (MSA TS800), which was astonishingly and regretfully not accepted by the Maltese environmental authorities. Quite hilarious when one considers that both these authorities are government authorities. In other words we did not even need to refer to other standards when we already have our own. All that Mr Casha commented on had been researched and accurately forecast to the respective authorities prior to the introduction of the new regulations (an easy example was to follow the flop of the same law in Ireland), which all fell on deaf ears, and I would like to know if Mr Casha received any feedback or replies. The only “responsible” response we had been given right after all the researched negative forecast was passed on was “now we’ll see”.

Besides the environmental damage already done, one must also keep in mind other damage which is being caused by paper bags (carbon footprint seven times larger than a degradable plastic bag) and textile bags (in some countries being considered as a health hazard).