There have been plenty of hue and cries in recent times from many people and organizations about not using plastic bags, as they are considered bad for our environment. Like many other people even I had no idea how exactly it is harmful for our environment so I went to Dr. Google and also asked few friends and colleagues of mine why we should not use plastic bags? I got information in bits and pieces which I thought of putting up here on this blog. I hope it would help people reading this blog to get some insight of what actually happens with the plastic bag when you finally throw it in the garbage.
Here are few facts about plastic bag you might already be aware of:-
1) A plastic bag once manufactured would take minimum 400 to maximum 1,000 years to vanish.
2) More than 100,000 sea birds and marine animals get killed every year when they make a mistake of eating a plastic bag considering it to be their food. It includes dolphins; whales, turtles and other sea animals that are either choked to death after eating it or it remains in their intestine after they manage to swallow it. It causes indigestion and eventually results in a very slow and painful death.
3) All over the world 500 billion plastic bags are used in a year, which would come to 1 million every minute.
4) Approximately 60 million barrels oil is used every year to make them, which would be worth close to £3bn, still plastic bags are cheaper than paper bags but more harmful to environment.
5) Only 0.5% plastic bags are recycled due to its high recycling cost which means rest 99.5% of plastic bags eventually go in waste.
Here is the plastic bags recycle in pictures:-
You go for the shopping and bring home those cool, colorful and good looking plastic bags home. Most of the people reuse it 4 out 10 times.
However, eventually it runs out of its life and its capacity to hold stuff. So we throw it in garbage, as there plenty of people like us so you can see thousands of plastic bags at any garbage depot daily.
Like any other form of garbage these plastic bags too eventually go in a well, lake, river or ocean and keep on floating there.
Animals eat this plastic bag by mistake, assuming it to be their food. Eating plastic either chokes them to the death or if they manage to swallow it then it remain in their stomach causing indigestion and in turn death.
Plastic remains in body of Whales, dolphins and other sea animals that dies cause of swallowing it unless their body gets rotten. Once their body gets rotten completely, the plastic gets released again in water until some other sea animal mistakes it to be their food and this process would continue throughout the life of a plastic bag i.e. 400 to 1000 years.I hope this article would help you in taking a decision, whether you want to use plastic bags or not.
Please feel free to drop your comments below.
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ReplyDeleteGuess what... even I didn't have an exact idea how harmful these plastic bags can become. I think there is strong need to promote plastic baskets made of hard plastics. I am sure they can be used again and again and in turn would save the consumption of thousands ultra thin plastic bags which I believe is the real culprit.
ReplyDeleteWhether it is a paper or plastic bags. They both are harmful for our enviornment, as excess consumption of paper bags would result in lose of trees which we certainly dont want to see. I wonder should we condem the plastic in it's any form and instead of paper or plastic bags we should be using reusable bags made of cloth. There are many countries who have put a ban on the use of plastic bags, its difficult to comprehend why it is so difficult for the goverments of other countries to follow the same practice.
ReplyDelete