Americans throw away 100 billion plastic bags yearly.
Made out of low density polyethylene, they are among the products that are most commonly used by consumers due to their light weight, availability, low cost and huge variety of types.
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However, apart from these advantages for use, plastic bags are utterly dangerous for the environment. Their production process consume large amounts of non-renewable petrolium. They are not biodegradable, ie. they can not be degrade by biological activity, such as enzymatic action, altering the chemical structure of the material.
Morover, only 1-2 percent of plastic bags in USA are recycled, the rest end up in landfills polluting the soil and water, where needless to say they pose a serious danger for wild animals and birds.
Do you need all those plastic?
Most people think that plastic bags are an indispensible part in our daily lives. We grab them everywhere, in malls, grocery, bookstores… For the last one year, I started resisting plastic bag offers in all such occasions and drastically reduced my use.
I carried everywhere a large, yet light weight and foldable cotton bag in my briefcase. At home I emptied it and put it back. Solely carrying around a cotton bag accounted for at least 10 plastics bags a week which adds much up to over 500 a year. It is no minor number…
If nothing you can simply ask for paper. Most of the bigger stores have them. In smaller ones, like most grossery shops in Turkey, you can alternatively envelope what you buy -such as bread and other small stuff- in old newspapers.
The two biggest challenges were garbage and cat litter. As I decrease the amount of plastic bags I carry home, I realized how much I needed them for garbage and litter. Enfolding them in newspaper wouldn’t work, as you might guess (even though some even recommended that to me).
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Luckily we have some compostable options to buy, such as BioBag Biodegradable Recyclable Bags
Waste management is still a large problem with considerably low recycling rates. Only 20 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States are recycled and the larger quantity discarded by consumers has exacerbated this problem. To pronounce in numbers, annually around 1.5 million tons of plastic are expended in the bottling… not to forget the energy consumed in manufacture and transportation.
