Do You Ever Feel Like a Plastic Bag Drifting to Wind Wanting to Start Again
Plastic numberless are a convenient way to carry our purchased goods when nosotros become shopping. They are a part of our mod lives, and we don't tend to think much about them. In fact, information technology is estimated that up to ten million plastic bags are used every minute around the world [1].
300 to 700 plastic numberless laissez passer through the hands of an average American in just i yr [8] and a survey of the Section for Surroundings, Nutrient and Rural Affairs concluded that the average household in the United Kingdom stores effectually 40 plastic shopping bags at dwelling [2].
What about you lot? Exercise you also have that overflowing kitchen drawer full of plastic numberless you bring from your shopping trips?
If the answer is yes, you should know that this inadvertent overconsumption of single-use plastic carries with it a very high cost to the environment, which in turn likewise negatively affects our health.
How? Well, let's accept a look at the virtually important reasons why single-use plastic bags should be banned right at present.
Quick Navigation for Reasons Why Plastic Shopping Numberless Should Exist Banned
10 Skilful reasons why are plastic bags bad for the states and for the surroundings
#i Plastic bags pollute our land and water
Plastic bags are everywhere. Look around and you volition detect that plastic bags are the virtually mutual litter. Tangled in trees and fences along roads, floating in water, lying on the ground in parks and forests, surrounding garbage bins, washed off on beaches…
Because they are so lightweight, plastic bags get easily picked up by current of air and travel long distances by wind and water to pollute the nature.
Plastic bag litter has even caused great problems in some areas. For example, millions of discarded plastic bags clog h2o drainage channels and sewers in urban areas of Bangladesh. When the monsoon rains beginning, streets get waterlogged merely later the starting time few minutes because the water cannot pass through clogged sewerage pipes.
For many of u.s.a. it is difficult to imagine that something as minor as a plastic purse can actually cause flooding, but residents of some cities in Bangladesh have been struggling with this problem every monsoon season for the past two decades [three].
The Pasig River in the Philippines is another scary case of the negative furnishings of plastic numberless on the environs. Some tributaries of the river have been filled with plastic waste to the level that y'all could nigh walk across them without getting your feet wet. Unfortunately, such a high level of pollution doesn't come without consequences. The Pasig River is the viii worst source of ocean plastic pollution in the world.
#two Plastic bags are made from non-renewable resources and contribute to climate change
Nosotros hear everywhere around usa that we demand to save free energy. It is good for our environment, wellness and global climate. But only a few of u.s.a. realize that each time we accept those disposable plastic grocery numberless at store checkout, nosotros actively participate in wasting energy and depleting non-renewable resource.
The majority of plastic bags are fabricated of polyethylene, a substance that is derived from crude oil refining and natural gas processing.
Oil and natural gas are not-renewable fossil fuel-based resources and through their extraction and product, they emit greenhouse gases, which contribute to global climatic change.
The production of these numberless is very energy intensive. Globally, eight to 10 percent of our current oil supply goes to a plastic bag industry [4]. In the U.s.a. lonely, statistics reach upwardly to 12 meg barrels of oil that are used each yr to produce even more than plastic bags – 100 billion more, to give yous the precise number [5].
To produce nine plastic bags, it takes the equivalent energy to bulldoze a motorcar one kilometer (more than 0.5 miles).
Using these non-renewable resources to make plastic numberless is very short-sighted, because that the typical useful life of each plastic bag is about 12 minutes and that the earth's oil reserves incorporate enough oil to cover our needs through 2050, every bit the U.Due south. Energy Information Administration estimates.
#3 Plastic bags never interruption down
Petroleum-based plastic bags are composed of very resistant synthetic polymers that may take up to ane,000 years or never until they completely degrade in natural environments [6]
What does occur in nearly instances is that when out in the environment, the plastic breaks up into tiny microscopic pieces that get deposited in soils (where nosotros grow food) or contaminate waterways. These pieces can exist so small that they are invisible to our eye.
You can be sure of one thing, though. Even when you don't run into it, these indestructible particles are everywhere around us, including in the nutrient chain.
Already in 2001, researchers found that the mass of microscopic plastic fragments in the Due north Pacific Central Curl was 6 times higher than of plankton. The subtropical gyres of the North Pacific Ocean are too documented to contain the highest concentrations of plastic. It's because Asian and Usa coastlines release large amounts of plastic waste product in the ocean [7].
Simply this comes along with many unanswered questions. We exercise not know the full bear upon of microplastics exceeding the mass of plankton in the body of water. We don't know how it volition in the long term affect plankton-feeding species and their predators.
Scientists have recorded some species of zooplankton eating tiny plastic particles. Because what important source of food plankton is for many other species, information technology is clear that plastic gets distributed beyond the marine ecosystem.
The truth is that nosotros practise not know however the full calibration of negative impacts plastic waste matter can accept on marine and terrestrial environments because information technology hasn't been effectually long enough to allow u.s.a. to assess possible scenarios of its influence on natural cycles.
However, 1 affair we know, is that by introducing a pollutant that may never suspension downwards in the environs can have implications that will far exceed any of our predictions.
#four Plastic bags are harmful to wildlife and marine life
Accept you e'er seen endangered sea turtles hatch? They are tinier than a palm of your hand and announced so fragile when struggling beyond the embankment to go far to the sea.
Even human footprints left in the sand represent mountain-similar obstacles in their path and waves washing up on the beach are another challenge, as they thrust them back on the dry out country to endeavour once again before finally existence picked upwards by a return current and kickoff swimming for their life.
Since their birth, infant turtles take only one goal – to get to the sea and swim into deep waters where they will feed and if successful grow into adult turtles. On their long journeying, they will run into many difficulties and only a small portion of them will survive.
Sadly, i of their newly acquired enemies is created by u.s.a. who should protect them instead. Plastic bags.
Plastic bags floating in the body of water resemble jellyfish, one of the main sources of food for some species of sea turtles, especially the critically-endangered Leatherback turtles.
According to a study carried out in 2013, up to 35 percent of turtle deaths were caused past plastic ingestion and the probability that sea turtles volition consume even more than plastic increases every yr [9].
Sea turtles are not the only species suffering from plastic bag pollution of the environment.
Most 20 years ago, a dead pelican was establish with its tum filled with 17 plastic bags [10]. In 2008, a crocodile in Australia died considering of 25 plastic numberless filling its stomach [11]. A calf had to be put downwardly considering of indigestion caused past eight plastic bags in its breadbasket. These examples could get on for a long time…
Plastic bags are oft mistaken for food by animals, birds, and marine life. The consumed plastic congests the digestive tracts of these animals, and can lead to health issues such equally infections, painful intestinal blockage, starvation or expiry by suffocation.
The most heartbreaking part of this is that the affected animals are not aware they eat something that will brand them feel miserable and will slowly kill them.
Animals can also hands become entangled in this plastic waste. At that place were numerous cases of birds caught in plastic bags, unable to fly and feed, eventually strangling themselves to death.
Like fate has met dolphins, seals, cats, dogs, deer and many other animals which got severely cut on their bodies due to plastic bag entanglement.
National Geographic made a video on how helpless it feels to be caught in a plastic purse. Have a look yourself to imagine the suffering of these animals.
A last example of a true horror caused by plastic has been discovered just recently. A 2018 study of coral reefs in the Asia-Pacific has confirmed that plastic waste product deposited on coral reefs promotes outbreaks of diseases that gradually destroy whole reef colonies [12]. So, plastic waste matter only speeds up the destruction of these most biodiverse ecosystems on earth.
#5 Plastic bags are harmful to man wellness
Many of y'all may take heard information technology already. Tiny plastic particles have been found in human feces.
But is it actually that surprising?
Microplastics were plant in soft drinks like Coca Cola, in tap h2o, in seafood… Information technology has contaminated our food chain, so it should not surprise us that it can be tracked in our body.
In fact, co-ordinate to researchers, every second person on the planet could have some microplastic in the body [xiii].
The reason to worry is that scientists do not know how our metabolism and immunity will react to the increased concentration of plastic particles in our system. They doubtable that it may add stress on the liver by introducing more pathogens into the body.
Additionally, plastics in our digestive tract may affect assimilation of some important trace elements (like iron) which nosotros demand for maintaining proper health [thirteen].
Plastic bags and plastic products overall comprise substances that are harmful to our health. The most common are inorganic dyes that are added to change the color of plastic bags.
These dyes on their own can leach toxins, just they can likewise be contaminated with traces of heavy metals such as lead or cadmium, both of which affect kidney health and proper functioning of other organs.
Plastic fragments in the ocean such as those from plastic numberless can absorb pollutants like PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and PAHs (Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) easily. These are known to exist hormone-disrupting chemicals.
Another indirect danger of plastic bags has breeding basis in the pollution they create.
Plastic waste that clogs water drainage channels and river tributaries of many Asian cities increases exposure of residents to water-borne diseases, equally information technology creates a toxic soup that remains stranded in i place for prolonged periods of time.
#six Plastic bags are not easy to recycle
As plastic numberless tend to get caught in recycling machinery, nigh recycling facilities practice not have the capacity to recycle plastic bags and therefore do not accept them.
In fact, plastic bags are considered by many recycling facilities the number one contaminant and their removal from the recycling stream costs municipalities close to $1 one thousand thousand a year [eighteen].
Since plastic bag recycling requires a specialized equipment that can intermission downwards the plastic and mold it into a new product, most municipalities exercise not have the budget to include their recycling in their waste direction program. Then, plastic handbag recycling facilities are few and far between and transportation to ane could be expensive.
As a result, the actual recycling rate for plastic bags globally is between five to 15 percentage, while in the The states it makes just i percent a yr [17].
An additional problem with plastic grocery bags recycling is their cleanliness. Ideally, to be suitable for recycling, bags demand to be clean to be accepted, which is oftentimes a problem, considering that we utilize them to conduct groceries and potentially leaky goods.
#seven Plastic bags are costly to pay for and to make clean up subsequently
If there is i piece of advice that anybody should remember, it would exist that "nothing is for free" in this world.
While nosotros may not pay for plastic bags directly when we go shopping, they are anything but "free."
On average, plastic numberless cost retailers nearly three-5 cents each. It may not seem like much, but when y'all imagine how many numberless they have to provide throughout a year, you volition apace realize that plastic bags are costly. Then, retailers incorporate this price "hiddenly" into prices of other items sold at stores.
Additionally, someone has to pay the toll of dealing with plastic bags in the waste product stream. This includes waste material collection, regular cleanups to remove plastic bag litter along the roads or blown abroad from landfills and then even processing at landfill sites.
Co-ordinate to some estimates, the toll of plastic pocketbook cleanup is about 17 cents per bag [14] and the cost is paid past us one time once more.
On average, taxpayers end upward paying about $88 per year just on plastic purse waste [15].
So that "free" plastic handbag isn't so free later all.
#8 Plastic bags have external costs
Beyond the costs associated with the production and purchasing of plastic bags past retailers, there are many external costs that are often not considered.
These costs include the true environmental costs of resource extraction and depletion, the loss of quality of life, economic loss from littering, and wildlife loss.
Unfortunately, such costs are typically non included in most economic analyses, as they are non piece of cake to calculate considering the equation would accept to involve many indirect variables.
Even so, in 2014, the Un Environment Plan (UNEP) supported the first project to calculate the "real" price of plastic, including agin ecology impacts of its production, employ and disposal.
The resulting number is staggering. Plastic use costs approximately $75 billion a year [xvi].
#ix There are better alternatives bachelor, and jobs to go with them!
The very best culling is a reusable bag. Do you lot wonder why?
The explanation is quite simple. Reusable shopping bags are very durable and tin exist reused many times over the course of their useful life.
This ways that you are not consuming more than resources every time you need to acquit your groceries home. Instead, you are actually reusing a product, and that ways that you are utilizing earth's resources smartly, while at the aforementioned time reducing waste product.
For example, a reusable jute bag should last at to the lowest degree four years, during which it tin prevent the use of 600 single-use plastic bags.
In one case a person gets into the addiction of bringing reusable bags when shopping, it is non much of an inconvenience at all. After all, inquire your grandparents, they volition remember that during their time people were used to get shopping with their own bags or baskets.
The manufacturing of reusable bags or compostable alternatives to plastic bags offers a new opportunity to create sustainable products and provide jobs that get with them.
The trend has already started. There are some great initiatives that strive to provide jobs for women in rural communities with express possibilities of securing monthly income.
#10 Other governments are banning plastic bags, and then yours should besides… or at to the lowest degree make people pay for them
To date, effectually 60 countries and municipalities around the globe have instituted plastic bag bans, and boosted seven countries are planning to enforce the law in the closest hereafter.
Some countries have decided to exercise so after directly experiencing negative impacts of plastic bags, other countries have implemented the ban to accomplish their sustainability goals.
Permit's see some examples:
- The beginning country to ban single-use plastic bags was Bangladesh in 2002 when plastic bag litter chock-full drainage channels and contributed to destructive floods.
- Other country that has decided to enforce the country-wide plastic bag ban after suffering of negative consequences was Mauritania. The country instituted the ban in 2013 to minimize livestock deaths. Prior the ban, 70 per centum of livestock losses were attributed to plastic bag ingestion [xx].
- In the United States, California has banned single-utilize plastic numberless in 2016, merely the city of San Francisco has locally issued this ban already in 2012 and consumers pay a little fee for other alternatives similar compostable bags or recycled paper bags.
- Another example of a locally issued ban is Seattle where not only unmarried-utilise plastic bags have been banned but also single-utilise compostable and biodegradable bags. This measure should encourage people to switch to reusable alternatives.
For those governments that are opposed to full bans on plastic bags, another pick is to institute a plastic bag revenue enhancement, where consumers or retailers would pay a small fee for each plastic bag.
This strategy has been adopted by some countries and municipalities then far and has proven to greatly reduce plastic purse usage by consumers.
For case, in Botswana, the consumption of plastic bags dropped by l percentage after the introduction of the revenue enhancement in 2007. In Ireland, where this fee was instituted in 2002, plastic bag usage decreased past about 90 percent. This means that the average consumption of plastic bags per person dropped from 328 bags per year to just 21 [xx].
While these countries and municipalities have been making strides in their part of reducing apportionment of plastic numberless, in full in that location are 195 countries in the world [xix] and the issue of plastic pollution is still getting out of our hands. That is why the United Nations Ecology Plan Secretariat has recommended a ban on all plastic bags globally .
Steps towards a plastic bag free future: How to aid ban plastic bags in your customs?
Plastic bags have become such a nuisance because nosotros every bit consumers employ them excessively fifty-fifty when not needed and authorities haven't figured out effective ways of dealing with them as waste matter.
Until recently, the impact of plastic bags has been largely underestimated and disregarded.
Logically, the key to starting a change in your community is education.
This means that you demand to first educate yourself about the problem. Yous need to know what effects plastic bags have on the environment and health. What is the root of the problem (consumers or municipal waste direction)?
But you should also consider the other perspective – what effect single-use bags take had on the local economy and product affordability. Yous should examine what alternatives are available and whether local retailers, who often operate with a express monthly upkeep, have the ability to make the switch.
By being aware about these bug, you will be ready to present some strong arguments why plastic bags should be banned in your area and respond questions of people who will become your ally if you will persuade them about your good intentions. Which brings us to the 2d role…
Second step is educating others.
Assistance raise sensation of fellow consumers – that means everyone when you think about information technology (unless they don't shop…e'er).
Communities with good awareness about negative impacts of plastic bags have been more successful at enforcing the ban [xx]. This is because the customers voluntarily reduce their consumption of plastic numberless, which in plough provides enough fourth dimension for retailers to find suitable alternatives and switch to them.
One time the bicycle starts spinning, it leads to even more positive changes. The decrease in demand for plastic bags forces manufacturers to reduce their production and consider expanding in a supply of culling products.
Additionally, awareness raising campaigns create a social pressure that should inspire local government and institutions to help in making changes at a bigger scale, like a regional ban or levy.
You as an individual accept the ability to make a gradual change in your community. Start from yourself and slowly expand to your family unit and friends. Individual actions can lead to collective deportment.
How to terminate using plastic bags?
The commencement answer to this question that comes to everyone'south mind is to stop using plastic bags, right? Simply, refuse them when offered and bring your own reusable bag when shopping.
These steps are pretty straight forward and depend on your own initiative.
Withal, we are all too familiar with situations when a cashier automatically puts your items in a plastic bag before you can oppose it.
In many instances, it may seem also awkward for you to refuse the pocketbook, so you accept it this once, but you should know that it is fine to say no politely even at this stage if you don't desire that purse. The cashier usually understands, just had to exercise what instructed and what nearly customers await (unfortunately) from him or her. Nosotros all are just trying to do our task well.
In countries with a lack of awareness nigh negative impacts of plastic bags, a polite refusal might not be met with much understanding. So, you should try to explicate your reasons for not wanting your products packed in plastic bags.
Near retailers volition go your betoken, but information technology can too happen that they will not exist willing to sell you some products without placing it in their plastic bags because of having to oblige with some hygiene and sanitary standards (for example when selling meat products).
If this happens, there are a few scenarios you can follow:
- Yous could either discuss with a store manager a possibility of bringing your own containers for these products.
- Wait for another identify that does accept or use alternative packaging, such equally modest local stores that apply paper wraps or compostable bags.
- Or yous may demand to accept that plastic bag this time and and then start campaigning for a plastic bag ban in your area 😊.
What to exercise with plastic numberless you already have at dwelling?
The best thing you can exercise with those old plastic bags that have been stashed in that overflowing drawer in your kitchen is to recycle them.
You lot cannot recycle them in the regular curbside collection of plastic, but you should be able to find many larger nutrient stores and retailers (for case: Target, Walmart, Tesco, Morrisons, etc.) that do collect plastic bags and other plastic films and transport them for proper recycling.
You can use some easy online locators to run into the closest plastic bag drop-off. All you demand to do is paste your ZIP code and so come across the list of stores with handbag drop-off in your nearest location.
Most drop-off collection points accept plastic bags made from high-density polyethylene (plastic number two) and low-density polyethylene (plastic number four). It means that most bags tin exist recycled.
This includes grocery plastic numberless, Ziplock-type numberless, dry out cleaning numberless and bread numberless.
There is but ane requirement – these plastic numberless demand to exist dry out and clean, otherwise they contaminate the unabridged batch and your effort will practice more harm than good.
[1] https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/25496/singleUsePlastic_sustainability.pdf
[2] https://www.eco-business.com/opinion/getting-rid-of-plastic-bags-a-windfall-for-supermarkets-but-it-wont-exercise-much-for-the-environs/
[3] https://www.thethirdpole.cyberspace/en/2018/04/09/plastic-chokes-dhakas-drainage/
[4] https://1bagatatime.com/learn/plastic-bags-petroleum/
[5] https://abcnews.become.com/Technology/story?id=2935417&page=ane
[6] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/06/plastic-planet-waste-pollution-trash-crunch/
[7] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ten/12/124006/pdf
[eight] https://www.mnn.com/globe-matters/animals/blogs/rare-bounding main-turtles-eating-plastic-at-record-rate
[9] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/x.1111/cobi.12126
[x] http://world wide web.prijatelji-zivotinja.hour/alphabetize.en.php?id=934
[eleven] http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2008/12/plastic-bags-and-animals-making-the-wild-condom-for-wild fauna/
[12] http://scientific discipline.sciencemag.org/content/359/6374/460
[13] https://www.theguardian.com/surroundings/2018/oct/22/microplastics-found-in-human-stools-for-the-commencement-fourth dimension
[fourteen] https://1bagatatime.com/learn/plastic-bag-clean-costs/
[fifteen] http://world wide web.bagmonster.com/2010/04/the-true-cost-of-single-apply-bags.html
[16] http://www.cep.unep.org/cep-documents/unep-press-release-on-the-effects-of-plastic-waste material-on-marine-ecosystems.pdf
[17] https://greentumble.com/can-plastic-bags-exist-recycled/
[18] https://1bagatatime.com/acquire/plastic-pocketbook-clean-costs/
[19] https://www.worldatlas.com/manufactures/how-many-countries-are-in-the-earth.html
[20] https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/25496/singleUsePlastic_sustainability.pdf
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