Plastic bags are difficult and expensive to recycle and most end up in landfills where they take about 300 years to photodegrade. They break down into small toxic particles that contaminate soil and waterways and enter the food chain when animals accidentally ingest them. The main impact of plastic bags on the environment is that they take many years to break down. In addition, toxic substances are released into the soil when plastic bags die under sunlight and, if plastic bags burn, they release a toxic substance into the air that causes ambient air pollution.
Simons (200) suggests that, due to the unregulated accumulation of carcinogenic compounds, the use of plastic bags may allow incursion into cancerous diseases. Plastic bags are dumped indiscriminately in landfills around the world, which occupy tons of hectares of land and emit dangerous methane and carbon dioxide gases, as well as highly toxic leachate from these landfills during their decomposition phase. Plastic bags kill about 100,000 animals a year. Many animals, such as whales, dolphins, turtles, penguins and dolphins, ingest plastic bags to confuse them with food.
For example, sea turtles mistake floating plastic bags for jellyfish. These sea turtles are at risk of extinction, in part due to the consumption of excessive amounts of plastics. Plastic cannot be digested properly and will therefore accumulate in the stomach and cause the animal to die. Worse yet, ingested plastics will remain intact even after the dead animal decays.
That means that another animal can ingest it and eventually suffer the same consequences. It can take up to 2000 years for plastic to fully decay. In fact, all the plastic that has been manufactured still remains in the environment. That means you'll never live to see plastic decay.
Plastic production consumes between 60 and 100 million barrels of oil from global oil reserves. Therefore, plastic contributes significantly to the depletion of this valuable resource, causing the prices of petroleum products to increase with each passing day. Not only do plastic bags contaminate our water sources, but they also absorb a lot of water from these sources during production. You'll need about 22 gallons of water to produce one pound of plastic.
There's no need to waste so much water making harmful plastics. Plastic bags that end up being recycled on the sidewalks of houses end up entangled in sorting equipment. This slows down the recycling process, damages or breaks recycling equipment, and puts workers at risk of harm. The photo shows workers unraveling dozens of plastic bags from sorting equipment.
Simons (200) suggests that, due to the unregulated accumulation of carcinogenic compounds, the use of plastic bags may promote the development of cancerous diseases. Even so, the combination of legislation and pricing has succeeded in curbing the short-term use of plastic bags. For example, South Africa has implemented parliamentary legislation to limit the production and use of plastic bags. Plastic bags should be banned worldwide and their biodegradable equivalents should be implemented to address these serious and harmful problems.
A much better way to act than pressuring people to reduce the production and use of plastic bags is to ban their use and create substitutes. As a result, marine pollution from plastic bags has become a major environmental concern for governments, scientists, non-governmental institutions and the international community (Carpenter and Smith, 197). When determining the effects of plastic pollution on the oceans, the leaching toxicity of plastic waste must also be taken into account. In addition, they clarified that single-use plastic bags are one of the main causes of environmental and socio-economic problems worldwide, which has led to universal calls for the adoption of intervention strategies to reduce their use.
Education is another fundamental tool for improving behavior, since it educates people about the environmental and health costs of using plastic bags. Plastic bags continue to be a major source of landfill and marine litter, clogging stormwater management systems due to their tremendously low reuse and recycling rates. This is attributed to the fact that plastic bags contain some chemicals that mix with food when heated. As a result of these effects, the general public, activists and legislators have expressed outrage to the point that some national governments have banned the use of plastic bags for shopping.
