Letters: Reuseable bags needed, Go away critics, Meat mystery

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Reuseable bags needed
I'm sure even David Bennett can remember a time when when plastic was the exception rather than the rule. His letter (June 13) at least acknowledges that plastic waste is a problem and he wants real options. I really think that with his innovative brain he may be able to think of some ways to change our frightening and disastrous "throwaway" attitude to plastic.

Our attitude to the plastic bag is because it is so cheap that it is not valued. It is cheap because the production is so mechanised using cheap fossil fuels. They are prolific because we expect them and the manufacturers are pleased to cater to our addiction/their profits. We also mustn't kid ourselves that they are free from the shops who give them away - 1.6 billion of them a year are used in NZ, they don't cost nothing. The answer to this cheap resource is to put a value on it that takes into account the full cost to the environment, some of which is the cost to wildlife when ingested and causing a horrible death.

Sam Neill found them unpalatable when he ate one for a Greenpeace campaign earlier this year.

If cost is the reason people use so many of them before throwing them "away" (there is no "away"), then there needs to be a cost for them if people still want to use them. Plastic Bag Free Whanganui last year counted the number of plastic bags going out of the four main super markets in one hour. The total was just under 2000, one hour, one day.

It's great that David is re-using his bags, that does reduce the number used, but not nearly as much as having and using a long lived bag. The "Inside Out" bags PBFW is supporting being made at the prison are available at Sustainable Whanganui and also at the River Market. They are estimated to do 1000 trips.

The end of plastic bags by all retailers, not just supermarkets, will not be disruptive to our lives, except in the short term, as we get into the habit of remembering to take our re-useable bags.
John Milnes
Wanganui

Go away critics
"Haka criticism leaves schoolboy rugby team emotional wrecks" screamed the media headline in relation to some negative social media comments regarding the Rangitoto College First XV performing a haka and then having the event posted the event on Facebook.

In a society where "being offended" has become a shallow relational sport, and the impact of words has been falsely attributed to having as much power as acts of physical violence, having an entire senior rugby team wiped out by having "hurty feelings" as a result of alternative opinion is an inevitable result.

The resource of emotional resilience, the ability to be able to buffer criticism, know one's own mind and heart on an issue, and to resolutely stand alone against a majority if one has to, is sadly lacking in this team, both individually and collectively, and is representative of many young (and not so young) people today.

Criticism is nothing more than alternative opinion, and the only power criticism has is the power attributed to it by the recipient - nothing more. Rangitoto College would do well to continue with their haka and send a strong message to their critics - haere atu! (go away).
Dylan Tipene
Auckland

Meat mystery
Mycoplasma bovis has now infected about 260 farms, requiring huge numbers of stock reaching into six figures to be culled. More than a number of large-scale high performance dairy businesses may well go to the wall with the Government that ordered the cull slow to compensate for loses due to the complexities of the business.

But here's the thing: The disease poses no food safety risk but can hit hard at cattle, causing udder infection, abortion, pneumonia, and arthritis. There is no cure. It's a disease that has been prevalent in other countries for decades.

So where is all this surplus of slaughtered meat going? I see no reduction in prices in my local supermarket, no indication from Government as to what happens after the animal is slaughtered.

Is it going pet food, fish berley, McDonald's for hamburgers? Please can someone enlighten me? There are no huge fires as in Britain during the outbreak of foot and mouth; surely they are not digging a big hole and burying them.

Who can provide the answer?
Paul Evans-Mcleod
Te Rapa

No difference
Darrell Grace is wrong when he claimed in a letter June 14 that "The most recent NZ study of oral health shows that adolescents with fluoridation have 40 per cent less decay than those living without".

The latest study is by Schluter and Lee, published in the journal BMC Oral Health in 2016. It showed no difference between fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas for non-Maori children.

The latest NZ School Dental Statistics with around 45,000 children in each age group provide the same result. The reason for the difference in Maori children is likely to do with the fact it is mostly lower socio-economic regions such as Northland that are not fluoridated and higher socio-economic regions such as Wellington are fluoridated.

Darrell probably gets his "40 per cent" from a 2009 Oral Health Survey that has only 60 children in each age group and was never intended as a fluoridation study.
Mary Byrne
Wairarapa