OT: Say NO to plastic bags!!

Whistle
1

I got to thinking yesterday about the consumption of plastics used on a daily basis – primarily grocery plastic bags. All grocery stores have them and people use them in great excess. In just one town, thousands of bags in a day’s time are used to sack groceries and then are discarded – and these bags are ending up in landfills, further polluting the land and endangering animals. Multiply those thousands that are used in a town by every store in America and the number would be staggering. Something must be done to stop this! So, it prompted me last night to do research and I came across a very informative site where I learned of the facts below:

It is estimated that an average individual uses around 130 plastic bags per year.

Plastic bags are made from a non-renewable natural resource: petroleum. Consequently, the manufacturing of plastic bags contributes to the diminishing availability of our natural resources and the damage to the environment from the extraction of petroleum.

Most plastic bags are made of polyethylene - more commonly known as polythene - they are hazardous to manufacture and are said to take up to 1,000 years to decompose on land and 450 years in water.

It is estimated 100,000 marine mammals die each year because of plastic litter in our ocean in the North Pacific. They either become entangled or mistake the plastic for food, swallow the plastic, and then choke. For instance, environmentalists have pointed out that turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellyfish and invariably swallow them.

Land animals seem to be victims as well. In countries such as India, cows are mistakenly ingesting plastic bags on the streets as they are scavenging for food and end up choking or starving to death, as the plastic cannot be digested.

The above are just a few of the facts I obtained through the website I found – I will provide a link so all who are interested can visit the site for themselves.

What can be done about the use of plastic bags?
Bring your own cloth bag.
Ask for paper bag (holds 5 to 6 times more than a plastic bag).
Ask your merchant to promote cloth bags (charge for plastic or provide incentives for cloth).
Encourage development of bags made from natural products such as cornstarch and soy.
Write your elected officials regarding the hazards of plastic bags.
Participate in a community/beach cleanup.

I don’t really support choice two, because paper comes from trees – if everyone used paper bags, the number of trees that are cut down would increase greatly. Cloth bags are the best, in my opinion. They are reusable and far better for the environment.

Write to the retail corporations and urge them to discontinue the use of plastic bags altogether and only use cloth bags! Point out to them that it would save them money – by not having to purchase plastic bags and charging a small fee for the cloth bags – they would come out ahead.

Write to the plastic manufactures and encourage them to direct their manufacturing efforts to cloth bags instead of plastic.

Anti-plastic bag campaign

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Shouldn’t this be in the uillean pipes forum?

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paper can be recycled, and trees are a renewable resource.

Instead of encouraging people to not use plastic (because let’s get serious, that’s not going to happen), we should encourage people to recycle both the plastic bags and paper bags. It’s not that hard to do. I recycle all my newspapers, for example, and it’s as simple as walking to the bin behind my dorm and putting the papers in. Again, the problem is just people being lazy.

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You are correct, trees are a renewable resource - but it takes years for them to grow! Too many people will just throw the paper bags away - just as they aren’t going to stop using plastic. But - that isn’t going to stop me from my efforts.

You are right - people are lazy for the most part.

Good for you for recycling! More people need to do it!

I just wanted to add - I apologize for the OT post, but I’m trying to get the word out so I hope you guys don’t mind. If you do, I can delete it.

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When I was in Ireland last year, I think they had just introduced a tax on plastic bags in shops, only about 5p or 10p a bag, but it made people keep their old bags and not throw them out until they were absolutely rottered.

There was some chat last year about a similar tax in Britain, but it does not seem to have materialised. Shame. That’s one tax I would support, as the aim is not to rip us off but to clean up the environment, and of course you can avoid it by using re-using bags or taking your own.

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The best thing would be to take your own bags and nobody would have to use paper OR plastic, but if you’re like me you’d feel odd digging for a bunch of bags for them to put your groceries in. I know people (online of course) who actually use cloth bags, they take them to the store and the people have basically learned when they come they have their own bags.

Some places only offer one time of bag, and it’s always plastic. Plastic is also better to chew on if you have the urge.

I have a book on how to commit suicide for the terminally ill, and a plastic bag is the best way along with other things to do it painlessly. Plastics make it possible.

I just wanted to add - I apologize for the OT post, but I’m trying to get the word out so I hope you guys don’t mind. If you do, I can delete it.

Don’t be silly.

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I use plastic precisely because it is so easy to re-use. Plastic grocery bags in our house see several different “lives”…as lunch bags, as substitute for Saran Wrap, etc., until they are finally recycled (except for those used to dispose of the contents of our cat’s litter box…which by law must be sealed in a plastic bag before going in the trash). Paper bags, on the other hand, generally end up in the trash because they’re pretty much useless, and take way more space than I have to store. I do have some cloth bags, but not nearly enough to contain an entire pay period’s grocery shopping (I shop every two weeks). Used correctly, plastic can be a very environmentally sound alternative.

Redwolf

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Uhh, I wouldn’t worry about that. You have been around the board for a bit, so you know that there are plenty of OT posts. Not only that, but you did it the correct way, by clearly identifying it as OT in the subject line.

All the Best, Tom

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I use cloth for any large loads. I get plastic or paper bags as I need them. We have to put our paper/cardboard recycling in paper bags. As with RW, plastic bags in our house lead many lives.

As for the biodegradibility issue, it’s certainly a factor in littering. However, once something is in a landfill, it doesn’t biodegrade. The things are well sealed, and under so much pressure that oxygen, bugs, bacteria, and all the other things that eat stuff are completely absent. The first guy to study them found a 50-year-old, perfectly preserved tomato in a core sample that he drilled. I think the landfill is about the dumbest idea anyone ever came up for disposing of stuff. It completely flies in the face of the old adage, “The solution to pollution is dilution.”

Fortunately, between composting and recycling, we generate very little waste. About 1-2 bags a week; when there were only two of us, we didn’t even generate a bag a week.

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Our curbside gives us a container for recycling with space for cardboard. Unfortunately, they don’t take paper or plastic grocery bags, so if you want to recycle them, you have to take them to the center yourself. I can store A LOT more plastic bags than paper (and use them in the meantime), so I don’t have to take nearly as many trips…thus saving gas.

Like every issue, there are few “perfect” answers. Even paper bags are an enviromental nightmare, if they end up in a landfill (and the pollution generated to produce paper bags isn’t significantly less than the pollution generated to produce plastic). Cloth bags are great, but you need quite a lot of them unless you shop daily, and they’re easily forgotten at home, which means even if you prefer to use cloth, at some point you’re going to be faced with the “paper or plastic?” question. Most plastic grocery bags, as well as paper, are made at least partially from recycled content anymore…which is the most environmentally sound choice depends more on which you can re-use and recycle more easily than on any other factor.

Redwolf

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I specifically ask for plastic, because I need them. I re-use them when selling items, either for carrying away, or to protect items while shipping. We also use them as “poop bags” for cleaning up after our dogs. They also get used as liners for small trash cans. Our reuse-rate is equal to the rate at which they come in.

The ironic one is our local Whole Foods store, that uses these extra-heavy-duty plastic bags. I have less need for them, so they tend to hang around a long time before I use them. I think the intent was for folks to re-use them at the store, but I’d suspect that mostly they end up in the trash, which ends up making the problem even worse.

I wish there was a simple solution for plastic bags like there was for styrofoam peanuts. It’s getting downright rare for me to see anything but the starch-based peanuts anymore..

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There is actually a type of asian tree which grows super fast and can be “harvested” after about 3 years. I forget the name of the species though…

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My grandma and step-mom both have a drawer for plastic bags (ziploc, breadbags, etc.) that they wash and reuse until they start to fall apart. They’ve done this for ages, mostly to save money where they can I think.

I reuse the plastic grocery bags as garbage bags (it seems silly to me to spend money on the boxes of plastic garbage bags to use for trash). My mom and I also like to crochet with plastic grocery bags. Cut the bag around into a long wide strip and crochet away. Takes a bit of time to do, but it makes great tote bags and even hats. The bags, hats, etc. are really strong and last for ages… you can even throw them in the washer if they need it, but stay away from the dryer as they are plastic after all and will melt.

Sara

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When I was about 10 years old my cousins and I would steal cigarette lighters and take plastic bags and put them in a metal spaghetti holder thing. We’d light the bags and carry it around and when the bags melted they would make a cool ‘ploink’ sound each time they hit the road. It was so fun.

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I like the paper sacks better than the plastic ones because they are more useful and they tend to be sturdier. Also they are naturally biodegradable.

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Unfortunately, they’re only really biodegradable if you shred them and use them in your compost heap (I used to do that with the odd newspaper I’d buy). Nothing in a landfill degrades (they’ve found decades old newspapers in sanitary landfills that are still readable!).

If they’re more useful to you, however, they’ll tend to get reused, and that’s a good thing (that’s actually why I use plastic bags…I have more use for them than for paper, so they tend to get reused).

Redwolf

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And they burn less toxically than plastic.

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You’ve got me there! :wink: They don’t burn things at our landfill (and we have a gas fireplace), so it’s not an issue we run into, but I bet paper bags make good kindling.

Redwolf

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Oil is starting to become a renewable resource. Technology is only a short step away from making oil from various forms of refuse materials like Turkey Parts, Chicken Droppings and Canola Oil.

This one makes an oil that compares to Light Texas Crude:
Turkey Parts:
http://www.discover.com/may_03/featoil.html


Canola Oil:
http://www.badgeroil.biz/industrial/biodiesel.htm


Making Plastics From Chicken Dropping
http://www.india-syndicate.com/sci/gvjsci/18jan02.htm

Biomass Conversion
http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/renewable/technologies/biomass/bioconversion.html

Several Landfills around the US are already harvesting Natural Gas that is ocurring from decaying matter that is place in the landfill. In the old days, this stuff escaped and caused danger to landfiills, laters they burned if off and now they are using it.

With the prices of oil climbing, great amount of waste products available because of increase poplulation, this type of stuff is beginning to become practical.

So come on and give some credit to us capitalists, where there’s a will there’s a way to solve these problems.

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Several cars and trucks in our area run on recycled vegetable oil (basically, biodiesel).

Redwolf