Post by sugarJackal on Jan 22, 2021 12:38:49 GMT -6
What costs governments millions of dollars to clean up, kills marine wildlife, and pollutes our planet? The same thing that provides businesses with inexpensive bagging for customers, as well as a convenient and low-tax way to carry purchased goods. The answer is “single-use plastic bags”, and you can’t go anywhere without seeing them. Many people believe that we’d all be better off if plastic bags were banned entirely. This has been a subject of controversy since the bags were invented around fifty years ago. If the bags were banned, businesses, shoppers, animals, and the environment in general would all be affected, both in positive and in negative ways.
There are definitely a few negative effects that banning plastic bags could have on people. There are instances of shoppers taking their business elsewhere where bag bans have been mandated, as it’s cheaper than paying a higher tax for all paper bags or specialized biodegradable ones. In Seattle, for example, store owners have been known to have to shell out anywhere from 40% to 200% more on alternative bagging. The heavier taxes on the shopping bags have a negative effect on the indigent as well, who are already suffering food insecurities and financial hardships. (National Center for Policy Analysis Study, 2019)
The positive effects single-use plastic bag bans have are pretty substantial. When a sea bird is hunting for food, it sniffs out a compound called dimethyl sulfide, or DMS. It is an organosulfide compound produced by many different types of algae. Unfortunately for the poor birds, plastic bags, which trap moisture and warmth but allow for light to seep through, are perfect breeding grounds for algae. When sea birds accidentally eat plastic because of the way it smells, they cannot digest it. This results in premature death. (National Geographic. “Animals Eat Ocean Plastic Because It Smells Like Food” November 2016) Many leatherback sea turtles confuse floating plastic bags for tasty jellyfish, and like the sea birds, cannot digest the plastic and eventually die. When animals pass away from eating plastic and their bodies decompose, it returns the dangerous plastic right back into the ecosystem for the cycle to continue. (Wagner, Jamey. “The Effects of Plastic Bags on the Environment” March 2018) In addition to the awful effect plastic bags have on animals, some governments spend obscene amounts of money (over $200 million, in Australia’s case) trying to keep the eyesore plastic out of their soil. (Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority, 2014) Non-compostable plastic bags can take up to 1,000 years to decompose, so it’s important that people keep working to remove them from nature. Plastic bags do not biodegrade. Rather, they photodegrade, a process that breaks the plastic down into smaller toxic bits and particles. (Wilder, Sam. “Festival Food Recycling Sun, Fun, and Diversion” 2006)
A startup in Arkansas named cycleWood has produced a biodegradable replacement for these dangerous bags, made of a material called lignin, which is a polymer found in plants that makes them rigid and woody. CycleWood claims these bags biodegrade in only 150 days as opposed to hundreds of years. Other biodegradable replacements could cost as much as ten times more than the traditional single-use plastic bag, but a cycleWood lignin bag only cost .3 cents more than a traditional single-use plastic bag to produce. (Kerr, Drew. “Sustainable New Biodegradable Plastic Bag is in the Works” April 2012) This is still quite a large sum of money when one considers that over a trillion plastic bags are used globally annually. (Larson, Janet. earth-policy.org “Plastic Bags Fact Sheet” October 2014) It is, however, my opinion that if everyone worldwide tries to only use the plastic bags they absolutely need, we can afford to make these changes and adopt lignin biodegradable bags into our everyday lives. Even though the bags might cost a tiny bit more than a traditional plastic bag, the pay-off would be enormous. Governments would no longer have to shell out millions upon millions of dollars to fund clean-ups, so there would be more funding for agricultural studies and programs to feed more people more efficiently. Ecosystems would be cleaner and safer for wildlife, and soil quality would improve all over the world, leading to healthier and better sustained biospheres. This, I believe, would be a fantastic trade-off. In the meantime, we can all help by taking responsibility for our peers and our species as a whole by being more conscious of the materials we use and how we discard them, as well as lending a hand to keep our world clean and safe for everyone.
There are definitely a few negative effects that banning plastic bags could have on people. There are instances of shoppers taking their business elsewhere where bag bans have been mandated, as it’s cheaper than paying a higher tax for all paper bags or specialized biodegradable ones. In Seattle, for example, store owners have been known to have to shell out anywhere from 40% to 200% more on alternative bagging. The heavier taxes on the shopping bags have a negative effect on the indigent as well, who are already suffering food insecurities and financial hardships. (National Center for Policy Analysis Study, 2019)
The positive effects single-use plastic bag bans have are pretty substantial. When a sea bird is hunting for food, it sniffs out a compound called dimethyl sulfide, or DMS. It is an organosulfide compound produced by many different types of algae. Unfortunately for the poor birds, plastic bags, which trap moisture and warmth but allow for light to seep through, are perfect breeding grounds for algae. When sea birds accidentally eat plastic because of the way it smells, they cannot digest it. This results in premature death. (National Geographic. “Animals Eat Ocean Plastic Because It Smells Like Food” November 2016) Many leatherback sea turtles confuse floating plastic bags for tasty jellyfish, and like the sea birds, cannot digest the plastic and eventually die. When animals pass away from eating plastic and their bodies decompose, it returns the dangerous plastic right back into the ecosystem for the cycle to continue. (Wagner, Jamey. “The Effects of Plastic Bags on the Environment” March 2018) In addition to the awful effect plastic bags have on animals, some governments spend obscene amounts of money (over $200 million, in Australia’s case) trying to keep the eyesore plastic out of their soil. (Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority, 2014) Non-compostable plastic bags can take up to 1,000 years to decompose, so it’s important that people keep working to remove them from nature. Plastic bags do not biodegrade. Rather, they photodegrade, a process that breaks the plastic down into smaller toxic bits and particles. (Wilder, Sam. “Festival Food Recycling Sun, Fun, and Diversion” 2006)
A startup in Arkansas named cycleWood has produced a biodegradable replacement for these dangerous bags, made of a material called lignin, which is a polymer found in plants that makes them rigid and woody. CycleWood claims these bags biodegrade in only 150 days as opposed to hundreds of years. Other biodegradable replacements could cost as much as ten times more than the traditional single-use plastic bag, but a cycleWood lignin bag only cost .3 cents more than a traditional single-use plastic bag to produce. (Kerr, Drew. “Sustainable New Biodegradable Plastic Bag is in the Works” April 2012) This is still quite a large sum of money when one considers that over a trillion plastic bags are used globally annually. (Larson, Janet. earth-policy.org “Plastic Bags Fact Sheet” October 2014) It is, however, my opinion that if everyone worldwide tries to only use the plastic bags they absolutely need, we can afford to make these changes and adopt lignin biodegradable bags into our everyday lives. Even though the bags might cost a tiny bit more than a traditional plastic bag, the pay-off would be enormous. Governments would no longer have to shell out millions upon millions of dollars to fund clean-ups, so there would be more funding for agricultural studies and programs to feed more people more efficiently. Ecosystems would be cleaner and safer for wildlife, and soil quality would improve all over the world, leading to healthier and better sustained biospheres. This, I believe, would be a fantastic trade-off. In the meantime, we can all help by taking responsibility for our peers and our species as a whole by being more conscious of the materials we use and how we discard them, as well as lending a hand to keep our world clean and safe for everyone.