Free Plastic Bags... The Real Cost?

(data now a few years old, but still a thought-provoking piece)

Worldwide Stats

• over a billion single-use plastic bags are given out for free each day
• or well over 500,000,000,000 (that's 500 billion) plastic bags annually
• or almost 1 million per minute

Bags made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) are the main culprit - they'll accumulate and persist on our planet for up to 1,000 years.

• It takes 60 million barrels of oil to make these plastic bags.
• Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food.
• According to the BBC, only 1 in 200 plastic bags in the UK are recycled.
• The average family accumulates 60 plastic bags in only four trips to the grocery store.
• Each high quality reusable bag you use has the potential to eliminate an average of 1,000 plastic bags over its lifetime.
• In a landfill, plastic bags take up to 1,000 years to degrade.
• Plastic bags do NOT biodegrade, they photodegrade - breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest.
• Collection, hauling and disposal of plastic bag waste create an additional environmental impact, putting an unnecessary burden on our diminishing landfill space and causing air pollution if incinerated.
• Recycling requires energy for the collection, processing, etc. and does NOT address the above issues.

Biodegradable Plastic Bags are better, Right?
WRONG...

• Does nothing to address the consumption part of this problem, both types bags require a similar amount of energy, natural resources and costs to produce.
• Mixing of biodegradable bags in recycling systems for conventional plastic bags creates a sorting nightmare and can render entire batches of recyclable plastic useless.
• Bag littering could easily increase as people start to believe that biodegradable bags are less harmful to the environment and will disappear quickly it takes at least 18 months for most to breakdown.
• The breakdown of starch-based films in water consumes oxygen, resulting in oxygen depletion that contributes to algae blooms and the death of marine life.
• Water, soil, and crop contamination could result from the use of compost with chemical residues from biodegraded bags.

Paper Bags Are Better Than Plastic, Right?
WRONG...

• It takes more than four times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag as it does to manufacture a plastic bag.
• In 1999, 14 million trees were cut to produce the 10 billion paper grocery bags used by Americans that year alone.
• Paper production uses toxic chemicals wich contributes to both air and water pollution.
• Paper sacks generate 70% more air and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags.
• It takes 91% less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than it takes to recycle a pound of paper.
• Although paper bags have a higher recycling rate than plastic, each new paper grocery bag you use is made from mostly virgin pulp for better strength and elasticity.

Recycling Can Fix This, Right?
WRONG...

• Recycling rates for plastic bags are extremely low. Only 1 to 3% of plastic bags end up getting recycled.
• The economics of recycling plastic bags are rediculous - it costs £2,000 to process and recycle 1 ton of plastic bags, which can then be sold for a mere £16
• Many bags collected for recycling never get recycled. They get shipped to Third world countries where they are cheaply incinerated under more lax environmental laws.

The PlasTax - About Ireland's Plastic Bag Tax

In March of 2002, Republic of Ireland became the first country to introduce a plastic bag tax, or PlasTax. Designed to rein in their rampant consumption of 1.2 billion plastic shopping bags per year. What are the results?

• Consumption has dropped approximately 90%, from 1.2 billion to 230 million per year.
• Litter has been dramatically reduced.
• Approximately 18,000,000 liters of oil have been saved due to reduced production of bags.
• Reusable shopping bags, rather than paper, are taking the place of plastic disposables.

Do the planet a favour...

Do society a favour...

Do yourself a favour...

Buy a re-usable bag from either cotton or hemp fibre; and make sure it's organic!  - the chemicals used in non-organic production are environmentally destructive.

(Many thanks to Brian Timmins - see http://www.brianstimelines.co.uk for this excellent contribution).