6 Great Reasons to Ban Plastic Bags
Have you ever stood in a queue in the supermarket and watched the huge numbers of plastic bags that are given at checkouts?
Do you ever wonder where they’ll all end up?
I do.
And so does the author of the article which argues that we should ban plastic bags. Sarah Baulch says that the plastic bag has become a symbol of our throwaway culture – and I can see her logic.
Plastic bags litter roadsides, choke waterways and pollute oceans.
We don’t assign real value to the negative impacts of plastic bags.
They are consumed wantonly around the world because they are mostly free or very low cost. They are rarely recycled, and widely disposed of after just a few minutes use.
Related: Watch a fun video of the life of a plastic bag – it’s not quite what you think!
But should we ban plastic bags just because they litter? It’s a good reason – but there are more.
Ban Plastic Bags Because We Can
One compelling reason to ban plastic bags is that – we can. It’s an easy way to tackle plastic pollution (and litter) – and across the world it has been shown to be an effective and achievable step.
Wales in the UK introduced a 5p charge for each plastic bag – and usage dropped by a massive 70% overall (over 90% in some stores).
People make an effort to remember reusable bags rather than pay for single-use bags. But when they’re free, very few people bother.
Ban Plastic Bags Because It Will Help Wildlife
Plastic is a deadly threat to wildlife.
Fish, mammals, birds all get entangled in plastic. This can stop them moving properly, leaving them vulnerable to predators and starvation.
Wildlife of all types eat plastic, mistaking it for food. The plastic may block their internal organs, leading to starvation and/or organ damage, or it may slowly poison them.
And in case you think, well, it’s only wildlife…… just remember – who eats fish and marine mammals? We do of course.
Yes, it’s a proven fact, there’s plastic in our food. We’re eating our own trash (video).
Ban Plastic Bags Because The Volume is Huge
Do you know how many plastic bags are used each day? The numbers are startling.
1 trillion plastic bags each year worldwide – that’s over 1 million plastic bags used per minute
Americans throw away 100 billion plastic bags each year . 12 million barrels of toxic petroleum were used to make those bags (along with natural gas and chemicals) and their manufacture causes air pollution. The average American family takes home 1,500 plastic bags per year.
The UK used over 8 billion plastic bags in 2013.
Ban Plastic Bags Because They’re Not Re-Used or Recycled
Recycling of plastic bags is dispiritingly low. Of course, as a green reader you’ll know that recycling is the last resort – the carbon footprint of a plastic bag reduces drastically as soon as it is reused. And if it’s re-used as a bin liner, for example, then it can’t be recycled (but it’s not single use).
But it’s odd. Lots of people say that they reuse plastic shopping bags as bin liners (and thus they don’t want them banned). If plastic bags are banned, or if there’s a charge for them in stores, those same people now need to buy bin bags, which they didn’t before. But surveys carried out in Wales showed only a tiny increase in the sales of bin bags. Plastic bag usage dropped 70% after the charge was introduced, but there was hardly any increase in the sale of bin bags. Odd, isn’t it?
Ban Plastic Bags Because Single-Use Items are Lousy for the Environment
It just doesn’t make sense to use precious resources from a finite planet, and to create pollution, to create items such as plastic bags which are predominantly single-use. What a waste!
We’re facing a global waste problem, and single-use items exacerbate it. We need to reduce and re-use, not throw away.
Ban Plastic Bags to Save Money and Emissions
In 2011, the European Commission showed that a Europe-wide ban on single-use plastic bags would
- save €900 million ($968 million) per year through cost reductions in waste management and for retailers
- reduce oil use by 842,000 tonnes
- avoid emissions of 148 million tonnes of CO2.
That sounds worthwhile to me!
What About Where You Live?
Are plastic bags banned where you live? Or is there a charge for them?
On my little island we are charged for plastic bags – but only in certain stores. In many places they are still free. The charge has definitely helped, I see less litter, but there’s still a way to go.
What do you think? Let me know in the Comments below.
Please spread the word so more places can ban plastic bags or charge for them. The cost to the environment is just too high. Sharing buttons below and right – thank you!
I’m wondering when it was we became so dependent on plastic bags. Our trash company won’t pick up trash not in plastic bags. Going to the grocery I have for many, many years used cloth. My son calls me a bag lady because I have such a variety of cloth bags. They charged for plastic bags in Germany. I bought cloth or knit bags there too. I could live without plastic quite easily and eventually folks would get used to it. The problem comes from the jobs that would be lost unless we can come up with something else for those that work in plastic manufacturing and in the oil industry to do to make their living. Or maybe it will be what ruins us. It’s always about the money.
“A bag lady” – I love it! Yes, reusable cloth bags are far nicer – and stronger – than the horrible single use bags. Your question made me think about how we used to buy fresh fruit and vegetables before plastic – well, certainly my childhood memories were of putting everything together inside our reusable shopping bags – I don’t know why we now have this fixation that everything must be wrapped or bagged individually! The industrialization of food production i suppose.
Regarding plastic manufacturing and oil, well, I think the same things will happen as happened in the past. People find jobs in new industries. The Pony Express gave way to railroads – that caused loss of jobs for riders and less demand for horses. Hopefully plastic and oil will give way to reusables and renewable energy. Or yes, they (plus our seemingly insatiable demand for ‘stuff’ and meat globally) will ruin us.
Yes, it nearly always comes back to money, doesn’t it?