10 March 2016
An Arsenal of Plastic
Frank O’Nomics
No, this is not a complaint about the standard of football at the Emirates – although recent weeks have been one of great frustration for die-hard gooners who, yet again, find that February and March bring a fading to hopes of silverware (trust me, I do hope I am wrong). This is a rant about the repeated (at least 3 times this season) “raise the flag for the Arsenal” campaign that creates a mosaic by asking fans to hold a red or white plastic bag above their heads before a key game, most recently at the Barcelona match last month. Yes, the powers that be at the Arsenal have sanctioned the distribution of around 150,000 plastic bags to fans (assuming only 3 matches and 50,000 bags per match). They don’t give them to away supporters, although it would be interesting to see what they would do with them.
The group behind this questionable initiative is called REDaction. They have, since 2003, been trying to remedy the lack of atmosphere at Arsenal home games. Frankly they have a point. The Highbury library was well named and it has taken 10 years for fans to settle in at the Emirates, with passions only running high for big names and local derbies. But why do they think that turning the stadium into a red and white bin liner will make a difference, and has no one told them about the scourge of plastic bags or the campaign to rid ourselves of the menace?
Around 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed across the world each year, with some 8 million tonnes of plastic ending up in our oceans, which has a devastating effect on marine life and the ecology of our planet. In the UK, shoppers took home 7.6 billion single-use plastic bags in 2014 (that is around 140 each), even though the average household already had 40 bags at home. The introduction of a plastic bag tax has reduced plastic bag consumption by between 75 and 90% (depending on which part of the country), so some real progress has been made. Why then have the Arsenal been so rash as to create so many more?
The bag for life argument does not really work given that they keep issuing new bags to the same seat – the turnover of Arsenal season ticket holders cannot be that great in spite of their frustrations. Further, the effect is merely to create an image for TV viewers, not to add to the atmosphere in the stadium as it is hard for the supporters themselves to get a full view of the effect, given that they are hiding behind a sheet of plastic. The bags do of course carry a message urging supporters to protect the environment and to keep the bags as a souvenir of the game. Remember that you are talking about football fans here – they will have other preoccupations than finding somewhere about their person to store a bulky plastic bag or to find a suitable receptacle for disposal. Of course I took great care to take mine home with me and used it on my very next shopping expedition – on which one of the handles broke. Bag for life? Maybe it is like the old joke about the watch with a lifetime guarantee – when the mainspring goes it slashes your wrist…
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