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. Plastic bags start as fossil fuels and end up as deadly waste in landfills and the ocean. Birds often mistake shredded plastic bags for food, filling their stomachs of toxic waste.
For hungry sea turtles, it's almost impossible to distinguish between jellyfish and floating plastic shopping bags. Fish eat thousands of tons of plastic a year and transfer it along the food chain and transfer it to larger fish and marine mammals. People also consume microplastics through food and air. It is estimated that, around the world, people consume the equivalent of the plastic from a credit card every week,1 and it is expected that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the sea.
The recycling of plastic bags does not affect the fact that they continue to be thrown into the environment and end up in landfills or oceans. These recycled plastic bags are not degradable and cause the same effects as non-recycled plastic bags. Waste from plastic bags represents a serious environmental hazard to human and animal health. If plastic bags are not disposed of properly, they can affect the environment and cause blockages in stormwater and garbage drains.
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 its decay phase. Discarded plastic bags that have already arrived in the field are not only particularly harmful to agriculture, but they are also very harmful. Most plastic fragments in the oceans, such as plastic bags, contain some pollutants, such as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), which alter hormones. Plastic bags never completely degrade, demonstrating that, as companies produce more plastic bags, more are introduced into the environment.
As a result, the contamination of marine plastic bags has become a major environmental concern for governments, scientists, non-governmental institutions and the international community (Carpenter and Smith, 197). Plastic bags continue to be a major source of terrestrial waste and marine debris, which clog stormwater management systems due to its extremely low reuse and recycling rate. The toxicity of plastic waste leaching must also be weighed when determining the effects of plastic pollution on the oceans. South Africa, for example, has restricted the manufacture and use of plastic bags by enacting parliamentary laws.
However, the convenience of these plastic bags comes at a very high cost to the environment and negatively affects human health. Municipal solid waste (MSW) includes all the residential, commercial and business garbage that the landfill takes every week, of which 18% was plastic waste, not just bags. Plastic bags trapped along coasts represent an environmental challenge that has detrimental effects on tourism. If plastic bags are banned, the city council can focus on bringing green containers to several apartment buildings and then meeting waste diversion goals.
Most recycling facilities don't have the capacity to recycle plastic bags and therefore don't accept them. 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 to buy. Education is another fundamental tool for improving behavior, since it educates people about the environmental and health costs of using plastic bags.
