Every day people around the world use plastic bags to carry home their groceries and department store purchases. They've become such a universally used and commonplace item that many people barely give any thought to their potential dangers.

The Impact of Plastic Bags

Each year, people throw away approximately 100 billion plastic bags, creating a surplus of non-biodegradable plastics in our environment. Even when you dispose of them in the garbage, plastic bags are caught in the wind and distributed into lakes, rivers and oceans where they have a detrimental effect on the lives of marine animals. According to the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation, more than a million birds and 100,000 whales and sea turtles die each year after eating or becoming entrapped in pieces of plastic. Plastic bags have become such a problem that some local and national governments are starting to limit their use. Countries such as Ireland, Thailand, Bangladesh and South Africa have taken measures to reduce or eliminate the use of plastic bags. In the United States, the cities of San Francisco and Oakland, California, followed suit by banning the use of plastic bags in grocery stores and pharmacies. The major food retailer Whole Foods also stopped the use of plastic bags in favor of recycled paper bags in all of its stores. There has been backlash against such bans by plastic bag manufacturers who argue that plastic bags are recyclable. They believe that the environmental impact of plastic bags can be reduced by making it easier for consumers to recycle plastic bags at grocery store collection sites. While it is true that the bags are recyclable, only 2 to 5 percent of plastic bags are actually recycled in the United States. The rest end up in our landfills and ecosystems where they will exist forever. As individuals become more aware of their impact on the environment, many are choosing reusable shopping bags or recycled paper bags instead of plastic bags. Not only do reusable bags eliminate the disposal of plastic bags, they reduce the creation of the bags, which poses its own environmental risks because the manufacture of plastic requires the harvesting of fossil fuels.

Source:

Salon.com: Plastic Bags are Killing Us

Zero Waste San Diego