Data released by the United States Environmental Protection Agency shows that somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year.
National Geographic News reported that less than 1% of bags are recycled. It cost more to recycle a bag than to produce a new one. “There’s harsh economics behind bag recycling: It costs $4,000 to process and recycle 1 ton of plastic bags, which can then be sold on the commodities market for $32.”
Bangladesh has banned plastic bags, China has banned free plastic bags, and Ireland took the lead in Europe, taxing plastic bags in 2002 and has now reduced plastic bag consumption by 90%. In 2005 Rwanda banned plastic bags; Israel, Canada, western India, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Taiwan, and Singapore have also banned or are moving toward banning the plastic bag. On March 27th 2007, San Francisco became first U.S. city to ban plastic bags, with Oakland and Boston considering a ban.
Plastic shopping bags are made from polyethylene, a thermoplastic made from oil. Reducing plastic bags will decrease foreign oil dependency. China will save 37 million barrels of oil each year due to their ban of free plastic bags.
About two years ago, many supermarkets charge extra for plastic bags, so that has reduced a lot of the consumption. Many people bring their own bag. And the bag is cheap at 2 cents, but this change was enough to reduce the “take-it-all” problem.
I’ve been recycling for many years. I grew up in Canada and in school they’d educate us to be nice to animals, to not throw gum in woods and to recycle and brush your teeth. But only in the last five years has there been actual bins in Portugal, where I live. And in the heart of the city, still missing some bins to allow for people to actually recycle. In bigger neighborhoods, the bins are provided.
And at first my family wasn’t too into it, and it took some time until they said “yep I’ll recycle”. Now, we’re all recycling, the four of us in the family… and it is just part of our daily life/chores. They now criticize others for not recycling, because it is easy to do.
It is still amazing to see that many people don’t even bother. There are TV campaigns, info to raise awareness and still it is like this is “garbage” and it goes into the main garbage bin. It confuses me. There are BLUE, YELLOW and GREEN BINS. What don’t they see? It doesn’t take a lot of work to recycle.
I think there is talk of a new campaign here. I don’t remember clearly but I think it was supermarkets providing cloth bags. So that they’d be reused. I think it is a good idea. If each person reuses a bag two or three times minimal, that alone will reduce the amount of garbage per year. And it is a start. A cloth bag can be used even more than that.
Maybe they’ll contract me to design these bags. LOL
Comment by Adriana — July 4, 2008 @ 1:05 pm
great image, great post. cant stand the filthy things myself.
Comment by polythenepam — March 16, 2009 @ 3:17 am