Plastic Bags

Holding yourself accountable for your environmental impact is easier if you chose something local, or something that you deal with on a regular basis. Something that I deal with daily is plastic grocery bags. Working at Kroger, I see them all of the time. Plastic bags are everywhere. You find them almost anywhere you can buy something. Many of them make their way, either to a land fill or to the ocean.  I think that we all know that plastic bags are bad for the environment, but I would like to show you just how harmful they really are.

I would like to share a few, not so fun facts, about plastic bags.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually.

Only 1-3% of plastic bags are recycled worldwide.

Industry figures show 90% of all grocery bags are plastic.

Plastic bags are made of polyethylene which is a petroleum product.  Production contributes to air pollution and energy consumption.

It takes 1000 years for polyethylene bags to break down.

The amount of petroleum used to make 1 plastic bag would drive a car about 11 meters.

Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade- breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways.  They then enter the foodweb when animals accidently ingest them.

86% of all known species of sea turtles have had reported problems of entanglement or ingestion of marine debris.

This is a problem because most sea turtles have a diet that consist almost completely of jellyfish. It is very easy to mistake a plastic bag for a jellyfish, floating in the water, the resemblance is striking. Some ocean life, like the sea turtles, try to eat the bags. They slowly starve because the bags cause blockages in the intestines. Others get caught in the bags and drown.   

Approximately 1 billion seabirds and mammals die each year by ingesting plastic bags.  Not only that, these poor animals suffer a painful death.  The plastic wraps around their intestines or they choke to death.

Less than 5 percent of US shoppers use canvas, cotton, or mesh bags. 

http://www.postconsumers.com/education/plastic-bag-environmental-facts/

It is estimated world wide that 1 trillion bags are used and discarded every year. Australians use 3.92 billion plastic bags a year, that's over 10 million new bags being used every day. An estimated 3.76 billion bags or 20,700 tonnes of plastic are disposed of in landfill sites throughout Australia every year. This is a massive number. Just imagine how much less trash there would be in landfills. www.cleanup.org.au/au/Campaigns/plastic-bag-facts.html

In 2010, eight million tons of plastic trash ended up in the ocean from coastal countries—far more than the total that has been measured floating on the surface in the ocean's "garbage patches." Plastic bags are only a percentage of this figure but regardless this is also a huge amount of plastic trash in the oceans, and this figure was calculated in 2010. I’m sure it is much higher now.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/02/150212-ocean-debris-plastic-garbage-patches-science/

Plastic bags not only take up space in landfills and not biodegrade, but they also make their way to the oceans and effect the wildlife. Plastic bags are not some commodity that is essential to life as we know it. Kroger, like most places, offer paper bags free of charge. You simply have to ask for them. Also, there are reusable cloth bags for sale. Personally, this seems like the way to go. The bags are sturdy and inexpensive considering all of the different thig they can be used as.  All hope is not lost. there are some measures being taken to cut back on the amount of plastic bags being used.

One of the most effective measures being taken is making consumers pay for their bags. “In 2002, Ireland started charging shoppers 15 eurocents a plastic bag. The result: bag use plummeted 90 percent. That’s a billion bags a year.” People are motivate by money. If they are suddenly being charged for something that they think they should be getting free, even if it is a few odd cents, they are very likely to no longer wat to use that product. Granted the price of having plastic bag pollution is arguably much high than a few cents here and there, it is a start.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gernot-wagner/follow-the-plastic-bag-ex_b_3227194.html

For those of us that think something a little harsher is on order, some place around the world have banned plastic bags all together.  In the US, several cities in California have banned plastic bags. And if things go accordingly then the ban could be implemented state wide. England, Mexico, India, Burma, Bangladesh, Rwanda, and Australia all have bans in at least, a city, but some bans are for the entire country.   http://people.howstuffworks.com/how-many-cities-have-a-ban-on-plastic-bags.htm

Knowing how harmful plastic bags are, I don’t understand why there are not more bans on them. It seems, to me, that plastic bags should be one of the problems with the simplest solution. They are not essential to life in any way. There are more environmentally friendly options.  I will admit that I frequently forget my reusable bags at home when I go shopping, but if I didn’t have plastic bags to rely on you can bet that I would remember my reusable ones.
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