I’m writing a text for school on the subject Plastic bags and their affection on the environment and also alternatives to plastic bags. Does anyone have any tips or interesting facts that I could use? Or links to good articles on the subject?
Also, do you guys discuss this much in school? Here in Sweden we talk about the environment pretty much, at least in my school. How is it where you guys live?
Still need that help, so if anyone has any tips it would be great…
OH MY GOODNESS HI THIS IS MY JAM
Okay so
Every single piece of plastic EVER created is still on the planet. Plastic was invented in 1907. It takes thousands of years for plastics to break down, and we're at like… 112 years.
We think it's easy to get rid of trash, but it's really not. We need to take care of our environment. Everyone talks about how plastic bags are bad for sea turtles and everything, but it's true!
If I were you, I'd look at the Zero Waste movement. It's super cool. The TED talks by Bea Johnson and Lauren Singer are great! Alternatives to plastic bags, as mentioned by these two lovely ladies, are fabric bags, or if you're buying in bulk, glass jars for foods such as sugar, flour, snacks, etc.
Honestly this kind of stuff is my favorite. I could give my own TED talk on all this.
Thank you so much! I will look into that movement you were talking about. Our assignment is also about the alternatives and how they affect the environment, and also how all the alternatives are produced. Do you happen to know anything more about that?
Hey so I remember we had a discussion about this in the general chat a while back
I was really into it at the time so maybe some of this could be helpful? (this is just copy pasting my response because I'm lazy)
- Humans produce about 300 million tonnes of plastic per year
- Only 9% of all plastic waste ever created has been recycled - 79% has been dumped in the natural environment and 12% have been incinerated.
- 8 million tonnes of plastic end up in the world's oceans every year
- Plastic, as people have said already, takes centuries to degrade. Right now it's just getting smaller - that means it's clogging up and gathering together in places like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
- Plastic in the oceans kills marine life:
A Bryde's whale that became stranded and died on Cairns beach in August 2000 had an autopsy done to reveal 20 square feet of tightly packed plastic, primarily shopping bags, lodged in its stomach.
(Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3948365)Not only that, but 40% of autopsies done on sea turtles show that the cause of death is plastic bags caught in their intestinal tract. Estimates say that over 100,000 marine creatures die every year because of plastic pollution. Never mind that the small chunks are entering the food chain via creatures like jellyfish and small fish.
If things keep going at the rate they're going at, oceans will contain more plastic than fish by 2050
If it clogs up in rivers, it makes the water stagnant and creates more breeding ground for pests like mosquitos, who can be vectors for diseases like malaria.
= yeah we really need to ban plastic bags
Because we're killing marine life, we're killing our planet, and we're ultimately killing each other
and this
I understand the idea of having a gradual approach, but the possibility also exists of having gradual bans - in Zanzibar, they started out by banning bags below the width of 30 microns in 2006 and extended that to 50 microns in 2015. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6135886.stm )( https://www.newtimes.co.rw/business/tanzania-mulls-banning-plastic-materials )
I was there just last year, and things worked fine with paper bags.
I think at some point, we're going to have to accept the reality of backlash and go ahead and try to salvage what's left of the environment.
Thanks, it helped a lot!
Thank you so much! I will look into that movement you were talking about. Our assignment is also about the alternatives and how they affect the environment, and also how all the alternatives are produced. Do you happen to know anything more about that?
Not a ton- In college, it's kinda hard to go zero waste. But they are reusable, and have pretty long lives if you take care of them. Every time you use a fabric bag instead of a plastic bag, you save that one bag. In using reusable bags in college, I think I've saved dozens of plastic bags (I don't go shopping a whole lot.)
Hey do you guys happen to know anything about the environmental impact of paper bags as well?
Well
I just googled it and apparently they're more controversial than I originally thought (though I haven't checked my sources very much yet so caution with that).
Hope this sort of helps!
Omg yes thanks that really helped!
@ninja_violinist by sending me those links you probably saved the grades on this paper for half of the people in my class :)
Yay! Time to put "grade - saving Google skills" on my resume haha
How did it go for you?