Plastic bags suck
Back in my day the main celebrity contribution to society was as tabloid filler and dubious role models. The closest any of them got to activism was making the headlines with, “Today in Hollywood several environmental activists were injured when a celebrity accidentally flipped their Ferrari full of cocaine into the crowd.”
The times they are a changin’ though. And for the better it seems. The Ditty Bops have a long conscientious and environmental history. Recently they created a non-profit organization called You and I Save the World. Right out of the gate they are taking on the popular foe, plastic bags.
The Goal
Their petition is based upon the awesome success of the Ireland plastic shopping bag tax. In Ireland you pay €0.15 per plastic bag in the hopes that with time that extra money persuades you to adopt reusable shopping bags. The effect it had was a 90% reduction in plastic bag use and 3.5 million in revenue, which the government uses for environmentally themed projects. We like to call this a bloody good idea.
Why Plastic Bags?
Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. They decompose, and less than a half a percent of them are ever recycled. They never go away. They do however love to end up in the ocean. In some uncanny plastic bag migration route they have created the North Pacific Gyre. A spinning island of trash (mostly plastic) the size of Texas. Of course marine life and plastic don’t mingle so well. For example, in April 2002, the Marine Conservation Society reported that a dead Minke whale that had washed up on the coast of Normandy was found to have had 800 kg of plastic bags and packaging (including two U.K supermarket bags) inside its stomach.
Your Action Items
- Go sign the petition that The Ditty Bops set up. It’s not hard and the site it’s on has been around for years and has proven trustworthy over time with your personal information. Sign here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/772724856?ltl=1174400916
- Find an opportunity in your life to switch from a disposable product to a reusable one. Maybe a cup, shopping bag or something like that. Here is a good site to give you some ideas: reusablebags.com
- If you can, let someone else know about the petition.
Thank you!
- shawn
[source: bring your own | you and i save the world | wikipedia]
Filed under: Commerce, Environment
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Get the Irish story right. the government lied before they put in the tax. Plastic shopping bags were not 5% of litter as they claimed. Irish government data confirmed the figure was just 0.75% which dropped to 0.25% three years after the tax came in. bag use did not drop by over 90% as claimed - another fidlking of the figures.
Plastic shopping bags are useful in their place - just don’t litter them.
I reuse mine as bin liners and when I take the dog for a walk. they are handy for many other things, and you would have to purchase a replacement bag should they not be available.
They must be the biggesy non-issue environbmentally!
Gerard
Thank you for the first hand perspective. I still favor the tax, but it’s good to know that the numbers are rather inflated =)
There is also this petition, set up to actually be delivered to the SF board of supervisors as well as all state governors:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/140125322
SF is thinking about a plastic bag ban for big stores, so this petition is promoting the passing of that bill, and encouraging other states and cities to follow that lead! Yes plastic bags are reusable, etc., but that’s not the problem. The problem is that stores doll them out in the thousands every day. Thanks for this…
Gerard,
Agreed, good to have the facts straight, but must disagree w/ your claim that plastic bags are the biggest “non-issue”, for several reasons. Mainly, the impacts of plastic litter on the marine environment, where plastic particles outweigh plankton by factors of 6 to 1 in some surface waters. And pose potentially serious threats to our entire marine food chain. Check out the research of Captain Charles Moore.
Its fine to say “don’t litter”, but were not quite there yet. And much of the plastic that winds up in oceans is “unintentional” - shipping accidents, overfilled trash cans, etc.
Its not just plastic bags at issue here, its a larger “disposable” mentality, that its okay to use and toss an item that will then kick around for the next 5000 years, or more…..reusing a plastic bag once or twice is still only delaying the inevitable trip to landfill or ocean.
For your bin, you can at least purchase recycled plastic content bags, or biodegradable, or - if you’re composting and recycling, thus avoiding wet food waste, you can reuse the same bag over and over.
Even if you weren’t considering the danger to wildlife, the plastic bag perpetuates our dependence on petroleum. Not a good thing, nor a safe thing nowadays.