Plastic bags used to be thought of as free, painless, no-brainer solutions to carry your groceries, and they even could be recycled as doggie-doo bags or bathroom trashcan liners. In recent years, even the most thoughtless of consumers caught on to the fact that there was more to the common plastic bag than meets the eye, if only for the fact that suddenly there is an array of non-plastic bags ava
ilable at chain stores instead of the throwaway ones. Origin:
plastic bags are from the same source as all plastic: crude oil. Like everything else manufactured from this non-renewable resource, it has two major drawbacks: manufacturing it emits considerable amounts of pollution, and the product is not biodegradable. In other words, it is difficult to produce, and nearly impossible to get rid of once produced. According to the Natural Environment website, 60 to 100 million barrels of oil are required to manufacture a year's worth of plastic bags worldwide, and it takes approximately 400 years at least for a bag to biodegrade. Impact:
the impact of plastic bags on the environment is enormous. As of August 2010, between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags are being used each year worldwide. Approximately 100,000 sea turtles and other marine animals die every year because they either mistake the bags for food or get strangled in them, says Natural Environment. In Australia, 50 million garbage bags end up as litter yearly, and the "plastic soup" patch floating in the Pacific Ocean is twice the size of the continental United States. It is roughly 80 percent plastic, according to The Independent, a British newspaper. Effects:
What exactly the impact of reusable bag usage in the U.S. is far from clear. Even though, according to the website Earth 911, reusing or recycling one ton of plastic means the equivalent of 11 barrels of oil are saved, the argument sounds hollow when you consider once the bags exist, they are here to stay. You can recycle them into anything you want, but ultimately, they will be discarded. Whether in the form of purses crocheted from Target plastic bags or as doggie-doo bags, plastic always remains plastic.
