Plastic Bags…. who needs them?
I, like all environmentalists, bring my own reusable canvas bags whenever I go shopping. I actually leave them in the trunk of my car so I never have an excuse. I never accept shopping bags anywhere I go, which used to apply strictly to plastic but now the same goes for paper. Why waste or kill trees just because I have to buy food. The bigger question is why isn’t everyone using reusable bags when they shop?
If everyone stopped using plastic bags it would be an average of six bags per person a week, that’s twenty-four bags a month and two hundred and eighty-eight a year. That is 22,176 plastic bags in an average lifetime. If even only 1 in 5 people in our country did this we would save 1,330,560,000,000 over our lifetime (MSNBC.com). So what’s the hold up? Are we really that attached to those ugly plastic bags? Are people that stuck in their ways that they can’t change? Maybe people just don’t understand that besides taking up space in that cupboard, you can never fit anything else into, that these plastic bags are not only killing our wildlife but taking money out o our pockets.
Plastic bags account for over 10% of the debris that wash up on our coastline. Either animals mistaken them for food and ingest them or they are eventually broken down into microscopic particles and enter the food chain. This has direct affects on humans. There is no way a living thing can break down or digest plastic or the chemicals that make them up. So our genetics are changed forever.
That’s not even mentioning the cost of these bags. It takes $4,000 to recycle and reproduce 1 ton of used plastic bags, which are then sold for $32 (Jared Blumenfeld). I don’t know about you but there doesn’t seem to be any incentive to use these bags any more. There are many countries that are banning free plastic bags; China, Rwanda, Israel, Canada, Taiwan, Singapore, Western India, Kenya, South Africa and Bangladesh have banned plastic bags. Ireland took the lead in Europe in 2002 by taxing plastic bags and has lowered plastic bag consumption by 90% (BBC News). On March 27th, 2007 San Francisco became the first city in the U.S. to ban plastic bags. Now Boston and Oakland are considering it. What could be so hard why aren’t we all doing this?
Plastic bags are made from polyethylene, a thermoplastic that comes from oil (CNN). If we reduce plastic bags it will decrease our dependency on foreign oil, and then there will be less demand for oil and then the prices will begin to lower. Who doesn’t want to see that?
Even if you aren’t an environmentalist, you can still understand why it is a benefit for everyone to ban plastic bags. Not only will pollution be improved upon but also, our oceans, seas, rivers and streams will be cleaner, which can only mean that the wildlife inhabiting these waters will be healthier. We will also lessen our dependency on foreign oil. Besides, you will look way cuter carrying an eco friendly canvas bag knowing that you are doing your part to save the planet.
Love ,
Collette McGuire
