Tips from Charlotte: MAKING THE SWITCH
Imagine your family going shopping once a week and buying your weekly groceries, then bringing them home after bagging them in about 25 plastic bags. What are those bags used for? Probably thrown away eventually after being used to carry muddy boots or other things that will eventually rip it. Or even being stuffed in the back of a cupboard never to be seen again. How many bag are used each year? Almost one hundred billion plastic bags are consumed around the world each year. All of these bags add up. Where do they go? How can we stop this? All of these are questions are important to consider and people are thinking about the impact.
Believe it or not the bags in our local grocery stores cost our State money in order to make them. Plastic bags cost one cent for every bag bought. Paper bags cost six cents to produce one bag. A biodegradable bag costs eight cents for every one made. The prices of biodegradable bags will drop over time if they are used more frequently. The price for environmentally friendly bags costs more but it costs our planet less. In San Francisco they gave large grocery stores six months to switch to bio bags, smaller stores were give one year. If they did not switch each plastic bag they used would cost them an additional 17 cents. They all most likely switched. England started taxing plastic bags; they use of them dropped by ninety five percent. Ireland started charging twenty five cents per bag used and their use also dropped. The State's and Countries are trying to stop the use but more needs to be done in this Country.
How long does it take for shopping bags to decompose? A paper bag takes sixty days to decompose. In some instances a paper bag may never fully decompose. Yet when making paper bags, the pollution is greater then making plastic bags. Plastic bags never fully decompose, scarring the Earth forever. The inks on paper and plastic bags contain petroleum or solvents, a non-renewable source. When this ink seeps into the ground at land fills, it gets into the groundwater. Biodegradable bags take sixty to ninety days to decompose. These bags can be placed into your compost at home. These bags are made from potato and corn starch make them good for the environment. The bagging industry needs to be changed. In the long run the faster we switch the more we will save.
Some important fact to think about. The average American home of four accumulates 1,460 plastic bags in one year. A growing number of supermarket chains are selling reusable bags. Whole food markets still offer plastic bags, but give a ten cent discount for every reusable bag the customer brings in and reuses. Americans make up five percent of the World's population, but produce twenty seven percent of the World's trash. The more you know about the problem the more we do something about it.
Hopefully, by now your family can make the switch and buy renewable bags to use. Plastic and paper bags both have their negative effects on the environment and when you use renewable and reusable they don't. If you local grocery store does not sell reusable or renewable bags, ask them to carry them. For now you can go to Hannaford, Shaw, and Wal-Mart to purchase reusable bags. Buy some and bring those to any grocery store and use them. So make the switch today.
Charlotte will be attending Mt. Ararat Middle School in the fall and is in the eighth grade.
|
