Like many of you I have my reusable non-plastic bags that I intend on using every time I go to the grocery store, yet somehow they are never in my car when I need them! I have put an end to that by making a point to return the bags to my car after unloading the groceries. That started a brand new problem. I found myself standing at the cashier and watching those ahead of me using plastic bags and realized I had forgotten mine in the car. Needless to say I’d run out and grab them just in time. I have noticed that some grocery stores are even giving you a savings if you bring in your own bags or giving free reusable bags for every $25 you spend. I went home with 6 bags one day! So if you are like many people who have a large collection of plastic bags under their sink being reused as garbage bags only to end up in the trash....have you ever thought of what happens to them after?
Producing plastic bags has a significant impact on the environment. They are made of polyethylene, a product of oil which is typically obtained from Saudi Arabia, Singapore or Japan. An estimated 100 billion plastic bags are used every year in the US and an additional 17 billion in the UK which require about 102 billion barrels of oil to produce. You might be thinking, that’s fine, I recycle! Unfortunately it is actually not as environmentally friendly as it appears to be. That triangle of arrows that appears on products doesn’t always mean endless reuse: it identifies which type of plastic the item is made from. Of the seven different plastics in common use, only two of them- PET (labelled with #1 inside the triangle and used in soda bottles) and HDPE (labelled with #2 inside the triangle and used in milk jugs) have much of an aftermarket. It all brings me back to that producing so much plastic is absurd.
While traveling to Thailand, my husband and I witnessed the unimaginable! Small boats packed high with garbage bags traveling into the middle of the ocean, to do what I asked? We were told by any locals that they would dispose of the trash from the resorts into the sea! This is crazy I thought. How could they be polluting this gorgeous ocean they were so lucky to have. It made me realize that these people weren’t educated on the harm they were doing to the oceans and beaches of their home. We talked to local scuba diving schools who told us they would take their staff and voluntarily clean the ocean floor. They would spend days removing garbage so it wouldn’t negatively affect the sea life. How much I wanted to stay until it was all removed but they said it is astounding how much garbage they find.
Some of the most obvious victims are the dead seabirds that have been washing ashore in startling numbers, their bodies packed with plastic: things like bottle caps, cigarette lighters, tampon applicators, and colored scraps that, to a foreign bird, resemble baitfish. Most plastic is not biodegradable. Unless removed, they will remain in the sea for hundreds of years, breaking up into ever-smaller particles. British Scientists discovered that microscopic pieces of plastic can be found everywhere in the oceans, even inside plankton, the keystone of the marine food chain. It is not only birds that are affected by our waste, all sea creatures are threatened by floating plastic, from whales down to zooplankton. A famous picture of a sea turtle with a plastic band strangling its shell into an hourglass shape; a humpback towing plastic nets that cut into its flesh and make it impossible for the animal to hunt. More than a million seabirds, 100,000 marine mammals, and countless fish die in the North Pacific each year, either from mistakenly eating this junk or from being ensnared in it and drowning.
I have a beautiful river running through my backyard where my husband and I have picked out yards of plastic making its way down to the ocean. That water bottle and polystyrene cup you saw floating in the creek, if it doesn’t get picked up, it will be washed out to sea. Once there it will go to the Garbage Patch, one of five such high-pressure zones in the oceans, the South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean. Together these areas cover 40 percent of the sea, a quarter of the earth’s surface! So 25 percent of our planet is a toilet that never flushes!
Sure plastic has its benefits, no one would deny that. It has given us bulletproof vests, credit cards, slinky spandex pants (what would the 80’s be without them!), breakthroughs in medicine, and computer science. How many of you own a Kleancanteen or some sort of reusable canteen? I think I have 4 and yet it took me some time to get used to the idea of filling it with water instead of buying a case of bottled water. Or how about filtering your tap water or using a Brita? Here are some of the problems associated with plastic bottles:
We will buy an estimated 25 billion single-serving, plastic water bottles this year. 8 out of 10 (22 billion) will end up in a landfill.
(Container »»Recycling Institute)
Bottled water is a waste of money. Consumers spend an estimated $7 billion on bottled water in the US each year.
Worldwide 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year.
(One world)
1.5 million barrels of oil is used annually to produce plastic water bottles for America alone, enough to fuel some 100,000 US cars for a year
(Earth Policy Institute)
Imagine a water bottle filled a quarter of the way up with oil. That`s about how much oil was needed to produce the bottle.
(National Geographic)
The bottled water you purchase is often in #1 PET or PETE bottles (polyethylene terephthalate), which may leach DEHA, a known carcinogen, if used more than once (mothering.com)
Along with plastic bags, plastic bottles are one of the most prevalent sources of pollution found on our beaches.
Never burn plastic-you are producing some of the most toxic gases known!
Maybe now you will make more effort to keep your bags in the car, buy a Brita or put a filter on your tap. Next time you are at the store and the cashier puts your one or two items into a bag say “NO” to the plastic bag. I find it absurd when I see people accepting the bag for their one item! Think twice before taking that bag, there has been numerous times when I have said “No thanks, I don’t need a bag”, I seldom wonder why they even put it in the bag to begin with, do we really need it? I hope I taught you all a little something about the harm that plastic causes to not only humans but to helpless animals and our planet. Momma taught us better, I know we can do better than this!
Producing plastic bags has a significant impact on the environment. They are made of polyethylene, a product of oil which is typically obtained from Saudi Arabia, Singapore or Japan. An estimated 100 billion plastic bags are used every year in the US and an additional 17 billion in the UK which require about 102 billion barrels of oil to produce. You might be thinking, that’s fine, I recycle! Unfortunately it is actually not as environmentally friendly as it appears to be. That triangle of arrows that appears on products doesn’t always mean endless reuse: it identifies which type of plastic the item is made from. Of the seven different plastics in common use, only two of them- PET (labelled with #1 inside the triangle and used in soda bottles) and HDPE (labelled with #2 inside the triangle and used in milk jugs) have much of an aftermarket. It all brings me back to that producing so much plastic is absurd.
While traveling to Thailand, my husband and I witnessed the unimaginable! Small boats packed high with garbage bags traveling into the middle of the ocean, to do what I asked? We were told by any locals that they would dispose of the trash from the resorts into the sea! This is crazy I thought. How could they be polluting this gorgeous ocean they were so lucky to have. It made me realize that these people weren’t educated on the harm they were doing to the oceans and beaches of their home. We talked to local scuba diving schools who told us they would take their staff and voluntarily clean the ocean floor. They would spend days removing garbage so it wouldn’t negatively affect the sea life. How much I wanted to stay until it was all removed but they said it is astounding how much garbage they find.
Some of the most obvious victims are the dead seabirds that have been washing ashore in startling numbers, their bodies packed with plastic: things like bottle caps, cigarette lighters, tampon applicators, and colored scraps that, to a foreign bird, resemble baitfish. Most plastic is not biodegradable. Unless removed, they will remain in the sea for hundreds of years, breaking up into ever-smaller particles. British Scientists discovered that microscopic pieces of plastic can be found everywhere in the oceans, even inside plankton, the keystone of the marine food chain. It is not only birds that are affected by our waste, all sea creatures are threatened by floating plastic, from whales down to zooplankton. A famous picture of a sea turtle with a plastic band strangling its shell into an hourglass shape; a humpback towing plastic nets that cut into its flesh and make it impossible for the animal to hunt. More than a million seabirds, 100,000 marine mammals, and countless fish die in the North Pacific each year, either from mistakenly eating this junk or from being ensnared in it and drowning.
I have a beautiful river running through my backyard where my husband and I have picked out yards of plastic making its way down to the ocean. That water bottle and polystyrene cup you saw floating in the creek, if it doesn’t get picked up, it will be washed out to sea. Once there it will go to the Garbage Patch, one of five such high-pressure zones in the oceans, the South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic, and the Indian Ocean. Together these areas cover 40 percent of the sea, a quarter of the earth’s surface! So 25 percent of our planet is a toilet that never flushes!
Sure plastic has its benefits, no one would deny that. It has given us bulletproof vests, credit cards, slinky spandex pants (what would the 80’s be without them!), breakthroughs in medicine, and computer science. How many of you own a Kleancanteen or some sort of reusable canteen? I think I have 4 and yet it took me some time to get used to the idea of filling it with water instead of buying a case of bottled water. Or how about filtering your tap water or using a Brita? Here are some of the problems associated with plastic bottles:
We will buy an estimated 25 billion single-serving, plastic water bottles this year. 8 out of 10 (22 billion) will end up in a landfill.
(Container »»Recycling Institute)
Bottled water is a waste of money. Consumers spend an estimated $7 billion on bottled water in the US each year.
Worldwide 2.7 million tons of plastic are used to bottle water each year.
(One world)
1.5 million barrels of oil is used annually to produce plastic water bottles for America alone, enough to fuel some 100,000 US cars for a year
(Earth Policy Institute)
Imagine a water bottle filled a quarter of the way up with oil. That`s about how much oil was needed to produce the bottle.
(National Geographic)
The bottled water you purchase is often in #1 PET or PETE bottles (polyethylene terephthalate), which may leach DEHA, a known carcinogen, if used more than once (mothering.com)
Along with plastic bags, plastic bottles are one of the most prevalent sources of pollution found on our beaches.
Never burn plastic-you are producing some of the most toxic gases known!
Maybe now you will make more effort to keep your bags in the car, buy a Brita or put a filter on your tap. Next time you are at the store and the cashier puts your one or two items into a bag say “NO” to the plastic bag. I find it absurd when I see people accepting the bag for their one item! Think twice before taking that bag, there has been numerous times when I have said “No thanks, I don’t need a bag”, I seldom wonder why they even put it in the bag to begin with, do we really need it? I hope I taught you all a little something about the harm that plastic causes to not only humans but to helpless animals and our planet. Momma taught us better, I know we can do better than this!
