By Ross Clark

Its not hard to see why everyones worried about plastic. The seas are unquestionably heavily polluted with plastic， as are some rivers and streams. Frans Timmermans， vice-president of the European Commission1， recently declared war on“single-use plastics that take five seconds to produce， are used for five minutes， then take 500 years to break down again.” Its utterly depressing to think that plastic bags， yoghurt pots and disposable cups will be the chief archaeological2 relics of our age.

我們十分清楚塑料袋對于環(huán)境的危害：生產(chǎn)一個塑料袋只需要五秒鐘，但是自然降解一個塑料袋卻要花上五百年。抵制一次性塑料制品成為許多國家流行的環(huán)保政策。但是在這種狂熱抵制的背后，我們忽視了許多更為復雜的問題：塑料制品的替代品真的更加環(huán)保嗎？對塑料袋征稅真的能起到保護環(huán)境的作用嗎？又有什么更好的政策能鼓勵人們主動回收利用塑料制品呢？

But when public opinion is so much in agreement on an issue， we should all be on our guard. Its exactly when everyone agrees about an issue that bad decisions are made， some with awful and far-reaching unintended consequences.

The trouble with the new plastic obsession is the same trouble we had with carbon emissions 20 years ago. Environmental policy becomes so focused on one specific， fashionable problem that no one notices that the proposed solutions are， in other ways， making matters worse. In the case of carbon emissions， the Blair government3 （along with the European Commission） became so fixated in cutting the amount of CO2 that they encouraged motorists to switch to diesel—inadvertently sanctioning an increase in deadly nitrogen oxide emissions.4

This is the risk we now face with the war on plastic. If supermarkets follow through on their recent promises to ban plastic packaging， its a struggle to see how they will keep fruit and veg fresh for long. The very people weve tried so hard to encourage to eat well will revert back to Turkey Twizzlers. It is easy now to forget what shopping was like before supermarkets transformed the British diet in the 1970s， before chiller cabinets and the revolution in food packaging， to which the traditional seasonal shortage of fresh vegetables was eliminated owes a lot.

Youre only really entitled to feel virtuous about eschewing5 plastic if you look carefully into the effect on the environment of your chosen alternative. Take Goves coffee cup.6 There have already been rumblings7 about overharvesting of bamboo in Chinas Sichuan Province. There is more general concern， too， about the wide-scale use of plant-based alternatives to oil-derived plastics. As long as bioplastic remains a niche product for concerned middle classes，8 the land issue isnt important. If bioplastics are adopted across industry， it will be a genuine cause for concern.

According to a report on the environmental impact of bioplastics published by the government in 2010， it takes 1.7 square metres of arable land to grow each kg of PLA9， one of the main bioplastics， which can be used as a substitute for many types of food packaging. Europe consumes almost 60 million tonnes of plastic a year. If all this packaging were instead grown in fields， it would take up 40，000 square miles—nearly a tenth of all arable land currently under cultivation in Europe. And what about the carbon emissions from biodegradable10 plastics？ They tend to decompose straight to methane，11 a greenhouse gas measured to have 20 times the potency of CO2.

What is remarkable about the war against plastics is that hostilities were first started a decade and a half ago， but were stopped in their tracks by some powerful evidence. The plastic bag tax was first tried in Ireland in 2002， when a 15 cent charge per bag was similarly found to cut bag use by 90 per cent. If shoppers are going without any kind of bag and trying to balance numerous items in their hands， that can be counted as an environmental gain. But if they have switched to other types of bag then the benefits are harder to discern12. When a plastic bag tax was proposed in Scotland， the devolved13 government launched a two-year assessment comparing the“l(fā)ife-cycle analysis” of single-use plastic bags against paper bags. In 2005， it came to the surprising conclusion that a“paper bag has a more adverse impact than a plastic bag for most of the environmental issues considered”.

Six years later， Defra14 compared the environmental impact of plastic bags with its rivals. That study came to the remarkable conclusion that a cotton shopping bag would have to be used 173 times before it became responsible for fewer carbon emissions than a plastic bag—cotton being a very intensive crop requiring large amounts of water and fertiliser.

Single-use plastic bags also performed better environmentally than paper bags and biodegradable plastic bags and plastic “bags for life”. And this was assuming that “single-use” plastic bags are just that—when of course they are often used for other purposes， such as bin liners15. When Wales introduced its own 5p plastic bag levy16 seven years ago， it led to a 25 per cent surge in the sales of pedal bin liners—to replace the supermarket bags that people had previously been using. Moreover， the plastic bag levy has done nothing to counter the wasteful packing being used in online sales.

Surely， if we were going to have levies on bags， the evidence suggests that it ought to apply to all kinds of bags and all kinds of packaging. Yet the plastic bag levy went ahead anyway， as if no research had been conducted into the issue. Its just not in the interest of government to look into the full environmental impact of a widely popular plastic tax. We consumers care but were busy. We just dont really want to be told that our careful measures are actually counterproductive17.

We must do something to stop plastic bags， bottles and beads clogging up the sea. A better idea might be a waste disposal deposit on all such goods， a surcharge which could then be returned to whoever presented it for recycling. That would give all waste a value， providing an incentive for people to collect it. Would beaches be littered with plastic bags if enterprising18 children were picking them up in order to claim a deposit， just as in my youth kids used to do with lemonade bottles？

Policymaking does not always follow logic. On the environment in particular it tends to dart between fashionable issues， ignoring complexities. For aesthetic reasons， its hard to like plastic. That gives the drive to banish it from modern life its particular momentum19. But I suspect it wont be long before we feel the need to reinvent it.

不難理解為什么每個人都在擔心塑料制品。海洋正毫無疑問地遭受著嚴重的塑料污染，河流和小溪也是如此。歐盟委員會副主席弗蘭斯·蒂默曼斯最近向“生產(chǎn)只需五秒鐘、使用只有五分鐘，卻要花上五百年來降解的一次性塑料制品”宣戰(zhàn)。一想到塑料袋、酸奶瓶和一次性紙杯將會成為我們這個時代留給后人的主要考古遺跡，難免會令人十分沮喪。

但是當公眾意見在某項議題上達成高度共識的時候，我們便應該保持警惕。正是當所有人在某一事務上意見統(tǒng)一的時候，人們反而容易作出不好的決定，有些決定還會產(chǎn)生糟糕、意料之外且影響深遠的結(jié)果。

我們熱衷于治理塑料制品所產(chǎn)生的問題，與20年前我們努力降低碳排放所導致的問題是一樣的。環(huán)境政策過分集中于某一個具體、熱門的問題，以至于人們注意不到這些問題的解決方案會在其他方面讓事情變得更糟。在控制碳排放這個問題上，布萊爾擔任首相時期的英國政府（以及歐盟委員會）在降低二氧化碳排放方面采取了十分死板的政策，以至于他們鼓勵開車的人使用柴油——這在無意間導致了致命的氮氧化合物排放量的增長。

這就是目前我們所面對的向塑料制品宣戰(zhàn)所帶來的風險。如果超市兌現(xiàn)了它們近期作出的不再使用塑料包裝的承諾，如何長時間保持果蔬新鮮便成為了一個不小的難題。我們費了很大力氣勸導要健康飲食的那些人將會重新開始吃“扭扭火雞肉”?，F(xiàn)在幾乎想象不出上世紀70年代在超市改變英國飲食習慣之前的購物是什么樣子了。當時，冷凍柜進入超市以及食品包裝革命的發(fā)生，都大大減少了當季新鮮蔬菜短缺的情況。

如果你仔細看清你選擇的塑料制品替代品給環(huán)境造成的影響的話，那么你才真的有資格為不使用塑料制品而感到高尚。就拿邁克爾·戈夫所倡導的可重復使用的咖啡杯來說，現(xiàn)在已經(jīng)有關于中國四川省的竹子被過度開采的不滿言論了。此外，大規(guī)模地用植物性產(chǎn)品取代由石油提煉加工而成的塑料產(chǎn)品也是一個更為普遍的擔憂。只要生物塑料依舊是中產(chǎn)階級所關注的利基產(chǎn)品，土地問題的重要性就會被忽視。如果生物塑料在工業(yè)生產(chǎn)中被廣泛使用，那么土地問題將會成為一個真正令人擔憂的事情。

一份2010年政府發(fā)布的關于生物塑料對環(huán)境影響的報告顯示，每生產(chǎn)一千克聚乳酸（一種主要的生物塑料，可以作為多種食物包裝的替代），就需要1.7平方米的耕地。每年歐洲的塑料消費量接近六千萬噸。如果這些需求只靠生物塑料來滿足，那么則需要四萬平方英里的土地——這大概是目前歐洲全部耕地面積的十分之一。此外，生物可降解性塑料所造成的碳排放量又在什么水平呢？它們會直接被分解為甲烷，這種氣體加重溫室效應的能力是二氧化碳的20倍。

這場與塑料制品的戰(zhàn)爭值得注意的一點是，對塑料的抵制首先是從15年前開始的，但是這一進程被一些有力的證據(jù)中斷了。2002年，愛爾蘭首次試行對塑料袋征稅政策，每個塑料袋加收15分的稅在當時也降低了90%的塑料袋使用量。如果人們在購物時不用袋子，而是直接用手拿著各種商品的話，這對環(huán)境是有利的。但是如果人們用其他東西代替塑料袋，對環(huán)境的好處則很難看出來。當塑料袋稅在蘇格蘭被提出的時候，權(quán)力下放的蘇格蘭政府進行了一項為期兩年的調(diào)查，將一次性塑料袋的生命周期與紙袋子的相比較。2005年，這個調(diào)查得出了一個出乎人們意料的結(jié)論：如果將大多數(shù)環(huán)境因素考慮在內(nèi)的話，紙袋子產(chǎn)生的不利影響要比塑料袋多。

六年后，環(huán)境、食品和農(nóng)村事務部比較了塑料袋及其替代品對環(huán)境造成的影響。這個研究得出了一個值得注意的結(jié)論：一個棉布袋只有被使用了173次以上，產(chǎn)生的碳排放量才會比塑料袋少——因為棉花是一種非常集約化的作物，需要大量的水和化肥。

在環(huán)保方面，一次性塑料袋也要比紙袋子、可生物降解性塑料袋和可重復使用的塑料袋要好。當然，這個結(jié)論的前提是——塑料袋也經(jīng)常被拿來用在其他地方，比如當做垃圾袋。當威爾士在七年前開始對塑料袋征收五便士的稅時，腳踏式垃圾桶襯袋的銷量猛增了25%，用來代替人們之前所使用的超市塑料袋。此外，塑料袋稅也沒能減少人們網(wǎng)購所產(chǎn)生的即用即扔的塑料包裝使用量。

所以必然地，如果我們要給袋子征稅的話，所有類型的袋子和包裝都應該被算在內(nèi)。然而現(xiàn)在只有塑料袋被征稅，就好像我們在這個問題上沒有進行過研究一樣。深入研究大受歡迎的塑料袋稅對環(huán)境的各種影響并不只是為了政府的利益。我們消費者也很在意這件事，但是我們卻很忙。我們只是不想看到，我們精心采取的環(huán)保措施竟會適得其反。

我們一定要采取措施，不讓塑料袋、塑料瓶和塑料珠繼續(xù)堵塞海洋。一個更好的方法是建立一個“廢物處理儲蓄金”，以作為額外費用回報那些將其回收利用的人。這樣的話，垃圾廢物也就有了價值，能夠激勵人們把它們收集起來。就像我小時候孩子們會回收檸檬水瓶子一樣，如果有上進心的孩子們?yōu)榱四玫揭恍┝慊ㄥX，主動將海邊的垃圾撿起來的話，我們的海灘還會到處都是塑料袋嗎？

政策的制定并不總是遵循邏輯。尤其在環(huán)保問題上，它容易受到熱門議題的影響而盲目求進，卻忽視了其中的復雜性。塑料袋的確不符合美學，所以我們很難喜歡它。這個原因使得我們努力將它從現(xiàn)代生活驅(qū)逐出去。然而我覺得，用不了多久，我們就又要讓它回歸了。

1. European Commission： 歐盟委員會，簡稱歐委會，是歐盟的常設執(zhí)行機構(gòu)，歐盟中唯一具有起草法令權(quán)力的機構(gòu)。

2. archaeological： 考古的。

3. Blair government： 布萊爾政府。托尼·布萊爾（Tony Blair），1997—2007年擔任英國首相。

4. diesel： 柴油；inadvertently： 無意地，不經(jīng)意地；sanction： 批準，許可；nitrogen oxide： 氮氧化物。

5. eschew： 避免。

6. Michael Gove： 邁克爾·戈夫，英國保守黨政治家，曾任教育大臣（2010—2014）和司法大臣（2015—2016），2017年起出任環(huán)境、食物和農(nóng)村事務大臣。這里是說他曾經(jīng)把可重復使用的竹制咖啡杯作為禮物送給其他內(nèi)閣大臣。

7. rumbling： [～s] 抱怨，不滿的言論。

8. bioplastic： 生物塑料，是來自可再生的生物質(zhì)來源的塑料，如植物油、玉米淀粉、微生物群等，能更好地進行生物降解；niche product： 利基產(chǎn)品。利基是針對企業(yè)的優(yōu)勢細分出來的市場，這個市場不大，且“有獲取利益的基礎”。

9. PLA： 聚乳酸（polylactic acid）的簡稱，是一種可再生生物降解材料，由可再生的植物資源（如玉米）所提取出的淀粉原料制成，是公認的環(huán)境友好型材料。

10. biodegradable： 可進行生物降解的。

11. decompose： 分解；methane： 甲烷。

12. discern：（尤指仔細思考或研究之后）看出，覺察出。

13. devolved： 權(quán)力下放的。20 世紀以來，蘇格蘭獨立運動愈演愈烈，迫使英國中央政府將權(quán)力讓渡給了蘇格蘭地方政府，“權(quán)力下放”成為當代英國政治發(fā)展的重要組成部分之一。

14. Defra： 全稱是Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs，英國環(huán)境、食品及農(nóng)村事務部。

15. bin liner： 垃圾桶襯袋。liner意為“襯里”。

16. levy： 征稅。

17. counterproductive： 事與愿違的，適得其反的。

18. enterprising： 有事業(yè)心的，有進取心的。

19. momentum： 動力，勢頭。