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Plastics banned in Taiwan

WOW

Taiwan's population is about 22 million. The article says each Taiwanese uses about 900 plastic bags per year. That almost 2 billion bags per year for the country.

My first reaction would be that someone is exaggerating. But if not, I find that amazing.
 
Update...

This got me curious so I called a guy I know who used to work at a plant that made Glad garbage bags. He said that one machine would make about 800 bags per minute and they ran 24 hours per day, 5 days per week. (Incidentally, they had 6 such machines at the plant and all 6 machines were managed by 8 operators per shift)

Not counting downtime, that would be about 1.15 million bags per day. At that rate, producing 2 billion bags would require 1736 production days. Assuming 245 production days per year, it would take a little over 7 machines to produce the required baggage - so say 8 machines including downtime.

Let's assume the Taiwanese use the same number of plastic utensils as they do bags. I know this is not accurate but let's also say for arguments sake that machines produce utensils at the same rate as bags, which would total 32 machines for all banned plastics.

Somehow I find it hard to believe that it takes 50,000 people to produce and distribute the products they are talking about.
 
Ah, but then there's marketing and people to manage the button pushers, and people to manage the managers, etc. oh, and don't for get R&D. Always wanted the ziplock with zips at both ends.....;)

But 50,000 does seem a little much just revolving around the plastic bag and utensil industry.

D
 
Originally posted by alex_ant
How in the hell does one use 900 plastic bags in a year?!? 900 plastic bags per year for every person in Taiwan? What the hell is going on over there?! Ay!
Click to expand...

That is a lot of damn bags.
 
quote: cnn.com

"The protesters said the environmentally friendly plan that aims to cut down the volume of garbage by around 30 percent would result in the loss of 50,000 jobs on the island where unemployment will reach a record high this year."

If I am reading this correctly, the loss of 50,00 jobs is is to cut down on the volume of garbage, not just plastic bags and serving utensils, but everything, environmentally unfriendly materials, in general. I think the story just came form the "plastics workers", who were protesting on the streets. The article says something about "Under the new policy...", that policy could include many different job categories, and the plastic industry just happens to be included. So basically, I don't think the 50,000 jobs are all in the plastic industry.
 
Originally posted by iconrad

If I am reading this correctly, the loss of 50,00 jobs is is to cut down on the volume of garbage, not just plastic bags and serving utensils, but everything, environmentally unfriendly materials, in general. I think the story just came form the "plastics workers", who were protesting on the streets. The article says something about "Under the new policy...", that policy could include many different job categories, and the plastic industry just happens to be included. So basically, I don't think the 50,000 jobs are all in the plastic industry.
Click to expand...

I believe they are talking about more than just the plastic bags and utensils. I wasn't very clear in my earlier post. I was just using the plastics to get an idea of the number of workers involved for those products.
 
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