EDITOR – I refer to the letter from ‘Frustrated Gardner’ last week concerning the rubbish bags. I would like to enlighten consumers about the plastic bag saga.
The blue bag in question is a big bone of contention with everyone. I don’t know how the letter-writer ‘bought’ the bags from the municipality as to my knowledge they can only be bought at Knowles in Pinetown. These blue bags cost R6 each and the municipality will only accept garden rubbish in these bags. I have taken this up over the years with the local councillor who told me the municipality takes a cut of the money paid for these bags, he couldn’t tell me how much.
He also told me the money for these blue bags is to pay for the extra truck needed should there be too many bags to take in one journey. I have only ever seen one truck collecting rubbish in Ashley and I see this truck every week. It is common knowledge the blue bags get thrown on the tip with everything else. A few years ago I sourced some blue bags from a store in Durban at half the price of Knowles; they were a shade darker than the normal ones and the municipality left them standing on the kerb where I had put them. The week after they again left them, so I put those bags inside black bags and they took them the week after.
The manufacturers of these bags try to produce the thinnest bag possible so they make more money. The bags used to be 60 microns thick (this is a little thicker than a page of the Highway Mail); now I see they are down to 22 microns or about a third of the page thickness and they are no longer fit for the purpose, as the reader pointed out. This is the same as with the black bags for general rubbish, and to cut costs even more, the black bags are now almost see-through. There is a specification standard laid down on the bag and the thickness but no-one cares, which in itself reeks of corruption.
The orange bag was the best quality and was very substantial at 80 microns thick, but even that one now is feeling the ravages of cost-cutting and is down to half that and semi-see-through.
I would like an honest explanation why we have to use the blue bag.
Terry Moss
Pinetown
