Plastic bag use in South Africa: Perceptions, practices and potential intervention strategies

Highlights

• The perceptions, practices and willingness to pay for continued use of plastic bags were investigated in South Africa.

• The high usage of plastic bags was primarily attributed to convenience.

• Age, gender, and education level influenced consumers’ willingness to pay for plastic bags.

• Potential interventions for reducing plastic bag use are discussed.

Abstract

Single-use plastic shopping bag consumption is one of the leading causes of environmental and socio-economic problems worldwide, which has led to global calls for intervention strategies to reduce use. In South Africa, plastic bag use is still widespread despite intervention efforts based on levying taxes. Using an online questionnaire, this study examines plastic bag use practices and factors influencing use in South Africa. The results show that the majority of respondents perceived there was a plastic bag use problem in the country but still highly used plastic bags because it was convenient to do so. Factors like, gender, age, education and environmental consciousness influenced people's willingness to pay for plastic bags but the relationships were generally weak. The paper outlines which interventions might be most effective in achieving pro-environmental actions.

Introduction

The consumption of single-use plastic shopping bags has grown exponentially since their introduction in the 1970’s as alternatives to paper bags (for transporting a variety of consumer goods) because plastic bags are reusable, lightweight, durable and cheap (Derraik, 2002, Macur and Pudlowski, 2009, UNEP, 2005). Globally, approximately one trillion plastic bags are consumed annually (Derraik, 2002; Rayne, 2008, Spokas, 2007). Although evidence on life cycle assessment (LCA) of grocery shopping bags suggests the environmental impacts of plastic bags (from production to disposal) are lower than alternatives (paper and biodegradable bags) (Ayalon et al., 2009, Environmental Agency, 2006, The Danish Environmental Protection Agency, 2018), the cumulative environmental impacts of high plastic bag usage are potentially considerable and concerns regarding the impact of plastic bag use still remain. Plastic bags are made from a variety of materials (both organic and inorganic), which include carbon, hydrogen, silicone, and nitrogen among others (Shah et al., 2008). The inputs for the production of plastic bags are extracted from oil, natural gas, and coal - all of which are known pollutants to the environment (Seymour, 2006). Plastic bags are often used once and then disposed of, ending up in landfills, where they take thousands of years to break down because they are not biodegradable (Ritch et al., 2009, Stevens, 2001, UNEP, 2005).

The environmental impacts are evident in all stages of the plastic bags’ ‘lifecycle’, which include energy production, their short-lived lifespan and growing numbers in landfills (Ritch et al., 2009), and pollution of oceans and seas (Haward, 2018). Unchecked littering of plastic bags can result in social-ecological impacts including visual pollution and destruction of natural beauty (Adane and Muleta, 2011, Ayalon et al., 2009); death of a variety of animal species which mistake plastic bags for food (Borrelle et al., 2017, Derraik, 2002), and the blockage of sewerage and drainage systems which, in turn, lead to flooding or spreading of disease (Adane and Muleta, 2011, Gupta, 2011, Rayne, 2008). Water trapped in improperly disposed of plastic bags can also create breeding grounds for mosquitos which cause malaria (Rayne, 2008). From an economic perspective, the impacts have huge direct and indirect financial implications on governments, businesses, and people, including management, transportation, and high disposal costs of plastic bags (Hopewell et al., 2009) as well as hidden health costs (Schirinzi et al., 2017).

Given the environmental and socio-economic impacts of plastic bag use, interventions for changing human behaviour towards reducing plastic bag consumption and promoting more sustainable alternatives are increasingly being considered (e.g. Convery et al., 2007, Haward, 2018, UNEP, 2005). Levying of taxes is one of the commonly adapted intervention strategies to reduce plastic bag use albeit with varied success (Akullian et al., 2006, Dikgang and Visser, 2012, Gupta and Somanathan, 2011; Hasson et al., 2007; Wagner, 2017). In Botswana, the government introduced a plastic bag tax in 2007 but allowed retailers to set their own prices, which resulted in a significant decrease in plastic bag use and partial success due to constant high prices (Dikgang and Visser, 2012). Ireland introduced a plastic bag tax of 15 euro cents in 2002, a price set six times greater than the average maximum willingness to pay (WTP) and resulted in a usage reduction of 90% and subsequently, a considerable decline in litter (Convery et al., 2007). It is claimed that the success of the Irish tax is, in part, explained by the fact that the plastic bag tax was set at such a high price - a level at which it would change consumers’ behaviours (Convery et al., 2007). This is done by giving consumers a ‘pause for thought’ causing them to avoid paying the tax, and in doing so, begin making use of more sustainable, environmentally friendly alternatives (Convery et al., 2007: 3). In India, a ban on plastic bag use in 2009 yielded a short-term success due to lack of enforcement (Gupta and Somanathan, 2011). Some other types of interventions that have been implemented in different countries include an outright ban on plastic bags in Bangladesh (UNEP, 2005) and China (Zhu, 2011), a plastic ‘producer tax’ in Italy, and a ‘weight-based tax’ (a tax based on the weight of one’s wastage) in Denmark (Convery et al., 2007) – albeit with varied successes and failures (Convery et al., 2007, Gupta and Somanathan, 2011, Wagner, 2017).

Notably, the above-mentioned interventions are limited by the huge costs associated with enforcing environmental legislation more generally (Heyes, 2000). Tax- or ban-based interventions are also thought to be ineffective since they do not focus on source reduction (Wagner, 2017), which is important in encouraging pro-environmental actions, which is tantamount to addressing the symptoms rather than the root cause of environmental problems (Mtutu and Thondhlana, 2016). In response to growing environmental problems, there is a growing interest in encouraging pro-environmental behaviour as a pathway towards achieving sustainability goals (Kollmuss and Agyeman, 2002, Steg and Vlek, 2009). Pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) can be defined as “behaviour that consciously seeks to minimise the negative impact of one’s actions on the natural and built world” such as waste reduction (Kollmuss and Agyeman, 2002: 240). Within the PEB literature, a substantial proportion of studies focuses on what factors influence pro-environmental actions. These factors are often classified into socio-demographic factors (age, gender, income status and education level), cognitive factors (environmental awareness) and affective factors (attitudes and values).

With regard to socio-demographic factors, the PEB literature shows that women are more likely to act in the interest of the environment than men (Mainieri et al., 1997) but this is not a consistent trend (Mtutu and Thondhlana, 2016), while income and education are often positively related with sustainable actions. For example, Lake et al. (1996) found respondents with a higher income were willing to pay more for a recycling scheme than those with lower incomes. Song et al. (2012) found that education and income had significant positive relationships with WTP for e-waste recycling; while age yielded a negative relationship. In contrast however, Wiidegren (1998) found that income status and education level had no influence on WTP for environmentally-friendly food, while age and gender showed some relationships. Based on the literature review, it is expected that socio-demographic factors will have an influence on WTP for single use plastic bags.

The full range of cognitive and affective factors that influence PEB is broad and beyond the scope of this study but some key debates around the importance of environmental awareness and values in promoting PEB are important for this study. It is argued that environmental awareness or people’s recognition of environmental problems promotes PEB (Ajzen et al., 2011, Wang et al., 2016). Therefore, the more people know about the environment via basic information provision (Ajzen et al., 2011) and awareness raising about the environmental effects and benefits of good environmental actions (Rivera-Torres and Garcés-Ayerbe, 2018) the more they can practice pro-environmental actions. Further, cultivation of environmental values and positive attitudes towards the environment is often associated with pro-environmental actions (Rivera-Torres and Garcés-Ayerbe, 2018, Schwartz, 2012). Clark et al., 2003, Schwartz, 2012 show that pro-environmental values are necessary preconditions for involvement in environmental programmes, while Mainieri et al. (1997) found that environmental attitudes had a positive influence on ‘green-buying’. However, Heberlein (2012) cautions that positive environmental attitudes do not always translate into good environmental actions. General environmental values, knowledge and attitudes are often measured by statements about environmental protection, harmony with nature and respect for the earth through the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale (Dunlap et al., 2000, Wiidegren, 1998)

From the discussion above, it can be seen that promoting PEB is an incentive-based rather than a punitive approach, centred on the values which can promote environmental actions. This approach aims at changing people’s mind sets, by creating awareness in the hope that people will make morally-sound changes. However, empirical evidence suggests the factors affecting environmental actions are multi-stranded, non-linear and complex (Kollmuss and Agyeman, 2002, Thondhlana and Kua, 2016), suggesting that a ‘one size fits all’ intervention for the promotion of PEB is not attainable. With broad-based recognition of the plastic bag problem, policy-debates are increasingly centred on the potential of behavioural interventions as a pathway to promoting PEB. Central to these policy-debates are questions relating to how far and how long such approaches can be efficient. However, the debate around possibilities for promoting behavioural interventions to reduce plastic bag use is constrained by a deficit of information on current use practices and factors influencing use. These issues are especially important for rapidly industrialising countries like South Africa, characterised by a growing middle class and high resource consumption (Vlad et al., 2011). Without this information it may be difficult to design interventions that identify and target specific behavioural elements. Therefore, there are increasing calls to consider behaviours, practices and the motivations around plastic bag usage in order to inform possible intervention measures for encouraging PEB.

Consistent with ‘emergent’ BRICS economies, the South African economy is characterised by a fast-growing economy, growing middle-class and high consumption of resources like plastic bags (Vlad et al., 2011), making the country a key player in contributing to and reducing global environmental problems like plastic pollution. South Africa is no exception to the global plastic bag problem, with consumers in the country using approximately 8 billion plastic bags per year (Dikgang et al., 2012). While the plastic bag problem does not feature in the top 10 problems facing South Africa in recent years (Ngonyama, 2016), Hasson et al. (2007) contend that unlike other types of waste, plastic bags are problematic because they are highly visible due to unchecked littering and non-recycling. Further, given South Africa’s relatively long coast line (of up to 2 500 km), its contribution and susceptibility (in socio-economic and environmental terms) to plastic bag pollution of world seas and oceans cannot be underestimated. This makes plastic bag use a topical and relevant policy-debate issue nationally and globally. At the national level, the high consumption of plastic bags means that a research focus on the ‘working group’ could be very important when thinking about interventions for reducing plastic bag use since this group has the propensity to consume more due to high disposable incomes.

In response to the plastic bag problem, South Africa applied a plastic bag levy of 46 rand cents in 2003 (which was subsequently lowered to 32 rand cents, with the public paying 17 rand cents, and retailers absorbing the remaining 15 rand cents) in an attempt to decrease plastic bag litter and its environmental impacts (Hasson et al., 2007). After the first few months, there was a reduction in plastic bag manufacturing of up to 80% (Hasson et al., 2007). Following the price reduction, plastic bag consumption rose “to 30% of the original production capacity” and has been rising ever since, despite efforts to reduce consumption (Hasson et al., 2007: 68). The increasing plastic bag use trend is attributed to affordable price. According to Hasson et al. (2007), consumers can at first resist new set prices, which temporarily reduce plastic bag consumption but as consumers become accustomed to the price, their consumption patterns steadily begin to rise, speedily returning to and exceeding original levels.

As already noted, in recent years there have been increasing calls to promote PEB (Mtutu and Thondhlana, 2016, Thondhlana and Kua, 2016, Steg and Vlek, 2009) to complement reactive measures (bans, taxes and fines) which are often short-lived and short-sighted. Thus, there is renewed interest in understanding consumer’s plastic bag use practices and factors influencing use.

In light of the context above, this study aims to explore the perceptions on plastic bag use and the effects of price on consumers’ behavioural patterns. Key research questions for this study include; i) what are consumers’ plastic bag use practices and reasons for use; ii) what is the consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for plastic bags and which factors influence WTP; and iii) what are the policy implications of the findings on interventions aimed at minimising plastic bag use?