By Lily B
Banning Plastic Grocery Bags
Imagine the cashier has just scanned your groceries in a grocery store. You’re then asked whether you want a paper bag or a plastic bag to put your groceries in. You choose a plastic bag. You might throw it away as soon as you get home, or you might reuse it for something else. Who knows? No matter what you do with the bag, there’s a strong chance it will eventually cause some kind of destruction on earth. Because single-use plastic grocery bags are so destructive to our planet, 8 states have already banned them.
According to www.ncsl.org, these states are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, New York, Oregon, and Vermont. Plastic grocery bags should be banned worldwide. They are harming marine life, causing animals to get sick, or even die. The bags aren’t easy to recycle, and large amounts of fossil fuels are wasted in the process of making a plastic bag. Plastic grocery bags are harming marine life. “Over 1 million marine animals (including mammals, fish, sharks, turtles, and birds) are killed each year due to plastic debris in the ocean,” says conserveturtles.org. Sea turtles are affected by plastic grocery bags because the bags block the turtle’s stomach when eaten. When the turtle can’t eat, it starves to death.
According to www.worldwildlife.org, when it comes to what turtles accidentally eat, “…a single piece of plastic can be deadly.” Plastic grocery bags are damaging to marine life and can make them sick or unable to function well.
Another reason plastic grocery bags should be banned is because they are not as commonly recycled as other types of plastic. As written on livegreen.recyclebank.com, “According to the EPA, only 12 percent of the category of plastics that includes bags, sacks, and wraps ended up getting recycled in 2012. That’s compared to 31 percent of PET bottles and jars (water bottles or peanut jars, for example).” Most typical community recycling centers can’t handle plastic bags because they are very lightweight and get tangled in the machines. Plastic bags are difficult to separate from other recyclable plastics. This is because the machines at the recyclable centers are meant for more solid items.
Another worrisome reason to support banning plastic bags is that making plastic bags uses up lots of limited fossil fuels. “It takes a lot of resources and energy to create a plastic bag. A key ingredient is oil.” theconversation.com reports. Millions of barrels of oil are used annually to make plastic bags. There is a limited supply of oil. Plastic bags are usually only used for about 12 minutes, which means the large supply of energy going into making the bags is quickly wasted.
In conclusion, plastic grocery bags need to be banned around the world. They are terrible for the environment and are extremely wasteful. They harm marine animals and plants, and they are very difficult to recycle. We need to come together to stop the use of harmful plastic bags.