Ban Plastic Bags - Save Our Globe

Imagine a world without plastic shopping bags, It could and should be our future. Although plastic bags didn't come into widespread use until the early 1980's , environmental groups estimate that 500 billion to 1 trillion of the bags are now used worldwide every year.

Every year in Washington state, people throw away about 270,000 tons of plastic bags and wrappings. Even though some of Washington's larger cities collect plastic bags for recycling, nearly 5,000 tons of plastic bags went to Seattle's landfill in 2002.
We need to protect our environment and conserve our precious natural resources by saying goodbye to the single use plastic shopping bag and investing in a reusable shopping bag.

Plastic shopping bags have a surprisingly significant environmental impact for something so seemingly innocuous. As well as being an eyesore, plastic shopping bags kill large numbers of wildlife each year. In the water, plastic bags can be mistaken for jellyfish by wildlife. This makes plastic bags pollution in marine environments particularly dangerous, as birds, whales, seals, and turtles ingest the bags and then die from intestinal blockages. Disturbingly, it is claimed that plastic bags are the most common man-made item seen by sailors at sea.

The biggest problem with plastic bags is that they do not readily break down in the environment, with estimates for the time it takes them to decompose ranging from 20 to 1000 years. One of the disquieting facts stemming from this is that these bags can become serial killers. Once an animal that has ingested a plastic bag dies, it decays at a much faster rate than the bag. Once the animal has decomposed, the bag is released back into the environment more or less intact, ready to be eaten by another misguided organism.

Plastic bags also clog drains and waterways, threatening not only natural environments but also urban ones. Plastic bags in drains were identified as major factors in the severe flooding in Bangladesh in 1988 and 1998.

Plastic bags are made from ethylene, a gas that is produced as a by-product of oil, gas and coal production.

Countries that have banned or taken action to discourage the use of plastic bags include Australia, Bangladesh, Ireland, Italy, South Africa and Taiwan. Mumbai (formerly Bombay),India has also banned the bags. WE NEED TO DO THE SAME.

In the meantime, our best plan of action regarding plastic shopping bags is to REFUSE....At the very least we should REUSE.