Plastic Bags Are So 2000 and Late!

As part of my internship for Freshkills Park, I get to research and write on blog topics that have some relevance to the park. This week, I discovered that a supermarket is opening up in Berlin that is fully free of disposable packaging. It is a great concept, and one that has already been introduced in America at a store in Austin, TX. I am hopeful we will see more stores move in this direction, because the fact of the matter is 32% of our household waste comes from food packaging.

However, I don't want to write about the ideas those two supermarkets are focusing on. Researching that topic reminded me of the continuing battle we have with plastic bags. They are everywhere! and sadly they are going nowhere once we have disposed of them. How many of us have found plastic bags strewn in street gutters, floating in a pond, caught in the limbs of a tree, or swirling around in a parking lot? Yes, they are easy to use for stores and consumers, but they are terrible for the environment. They don't biodegrade, meaning the plastic will always pose an environmental problem in some form. Most can be recycled, either through the store or your local recycling facility, but most folks don't know about this. In fact, this short YouTube video shows us how immortal these bags are.


Most of us aren't aware that plastics are actually made from oil. So in addition to remaining a problem long after they are made, the production of plastic bags is actually contributing to global warming. These handy human-creations are just plain bad. Most of us know plastic bags are not the best, yet we continue to use them, myself included. So far, the best way to get us to stop using them in mass quantities is by stores and governments providing carrot & stick incentives. For example, some cities - most notably San Francisco - tax plastic bags in the form of a 10-cent surcharge per bag used. Another example is the grocer/retailer chain in Great Britain, Marks & Spencer, that charges a fee for each plastic bag used. Other retailers offer discounts to those who bring in their reusable tote bags.

Personally, I would like to see more stores and governments adopt the measures of the above examples. The effect is a decrease in the use of plastic bags. Of course, other ideas should be formed and implemented that will help us get off the plastic bag high we all suffer from. Sometimes we can change our own habits, other times we need a little prodding to get us to alter our bad habits. I am hopeful we will see the decline of plastic bag usage within the next few years, but we have to start now. I am committing right now to put and keep a tote bag in my backpack so that I will always have it with me whenever I make those unexpected trips to a store. Please join me in making the stand against the plastic bag.

Floating on a Sea of Garbage

Following yesterday's post about under-reported environmental incidents, I decided that there was another story that has really been missed. It is a pollution event on a massive scale, and one we are likely all complicit in. The tragic events of Malaysian Airlines flight 370 allowed a very small pin prick of light to be shed on the fact that our seas are full of trash. Several large pieces of floating rubbish were mistaken for the missing aircraft that still has not been found.

News outlets understandably kept to the story of MH370. Despite some networks insistence on 24-hour speculation on nothing but the fate of the flight (I'm looking at you CNN), there was an opportunity to highlight the fact that a great deal of our daily garbage is making it into the world's oceans. Instead of ceaselessly covering the fact that nobody knew where the missing airliner was, news outlets had a chance to break up the monotony and teach their viewers about what happens when their (or a business') trash doesn't end up in the recycling plant or the landfill.

A few news outlets did decide to shed further light on the growing pollution problem with our oceans. The sad reality is that our oceans are heaving with garbage, rubbish, trash or whatever else you like to call it. A great deal of that waste is in the form of plastic. Because plastic typically floats and isn't bio-degradable, that is the face of ocean pollution. Recently, I saw a great Norwegian film about two young men living for several months above the Arctic Circle. They wanted to spend the time surfing on the waves as storms blew in. What they discovered is the amount of trash that daily washed up on the beach, and they made it their task to clean up the beach and keep it clean. All sorts of garbage washed up, and eventually they removed several tons of the stuff.

Garbage (plastic or otherwise) makes it into the ocean for a variety of reasons. A bottle left on the street gets washed into a storm drain on a coastal town and then follows the pipe out to sea. A trash barge carrying waste to a landfill loses some of its load as it moves through the water. It's little things, but they have massed into a very large problem and environmental issue. The harm our rubbish is doing to marine life and bird populations has been well-documented.

The good news is this is something we as consumers can limit now. Make sure you recycle what you can, and make sure it is contained properly. If you have a bottled drink you want to throw away while you are out and about, make sure it gets into the trash receptacle (look for the recycling containers in some cities). Don't just toss it and assume it made it in there. Better yet, take your bottle home with you and recycle it properly. If you see a plastic bottle or bag in the street, pick it up and throw it away in the proper manner. We have to take action if we want to unburden the seas from the islands of trash we have permitted to accumulate there. As with most environmental issues, the buck stops with the consumer. If we improve our habits, we make sure that ourselves and future generations get to enjoy all of the natural world.