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You Can Be Part Of The Answer To The Plastic Waste Issues

By: Matt Lewison

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It's time for BYOB! Yes, bring your own shopping bag! While we keep on our journey throughout a eventful 2010, it’s crazy to think about how much shopping we historically do here in America and world-wide. Whether it's frequent trips to the supermarket as we keep our kitchen’s stocked for amazing meals and tasty goodies or those occasionally dreaded (yet skillful) "6 bags on each arm" walks through the local shopping mall, all of it adds up to a whole lot of preventable garbage. One of the most blatant examples of this waste is disposable shopping bags.

An estimated 100 billion plastic shopping bags are used every year in the USA, according to the Wall-Street Journal. Most plastic bags end up in landfills furthermore the rest often end up in rivers, ponds, lakes, streams or in the sea, where animals can swallow or become entangled in them. Bearing in mind the amount of shopping bags that are consumed and wasted each year, the time is now to extend the word about the positive benefits of eco-friendly reusable grocery bags. After all, most of us desire to give back to our families, friends and communities as often as possible.

Adopting a BYOB strategy in our individual shopping habits is a straightforward way to do exactly that. If we could raise consciousness at this time, the positive outcome for the environment is immense for 2010 and well into the future. Several cities have already made gradual but significant progress in endorsing the use of eco friendly bags in recent years. Motivating consumers with plastic and paper bag bans, discounts at the register for reusable bag usage and tax motivations are a few to speak of.

Right here in America, the San Jose City Council only just approved among the nation’s strictest bans on plastic and paper shopping bags. It is a gigantic victory for the Bay Area, which has 1 million plastic bags per year accumulating in and along the San Francisco Bay. San Jose becomes the latest bay area city to enact some kind of ban on disposable shopping bags; others comprise of San Francisco and Palo Alto. Tracy Seipel of the San Jose Mercury News reported that it was in fact ONE man who really jump-started the ban, an additional remarkable instance of the power of one individual. Here’s a an excerpt:

"While visiting his sister-in-law in Taipei, (Kansen) Chu (elected to San Jose city council in 2007) went grocery shopping and was surprised to get charged for plastic grocery bags. The next day, he brought his own cloth bags back to the store. "I guess the question," said Chu, "was, ‘Why not San Jose?’ " He began a conversation with the city’s environmental services staff, which later moved to council committee discussions.

Save the Bay’s 4th annual report on the most garbage-strewn places in the state further demonstrates the need for BYOB. The 50-year-old environmental advocacy group focused on 10 particular bay-area sites where approximately 15,000 plastic bags were recovered in a single day last year in their account. Here’s an extract of an article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Kelly Zito.

According to (Save the Bay’s) research, Californians use about 19 billion plastic bags each year, 3.8 million in the Bay Area. The average use time for the bags - made using about 12 million barrels of oil each year in the United States - is about 12 minutes. In addition to the hundreds of years it can take for a plastic bag to decompose in a landfill, the bags also force downtime when fed into traditional recycling equipment. Typically, the bags get wound into conveyor belts or gears and must be cut out by hand.

Ten US cities have banned plastic bags so far, five throughout the past year. Even Mexico City enacted a ban on plastic shopping bags, which went into effect in August. The city of 20 million at present faces the realities of effective enforcement, which is not easy while the Mexico City Chamber of Commerce estimates there are 35,000 vendors in Mexico City’s downtown vicinity alone.

Bans on plastic bags aren’t the only efficient approach to scale back damaging waste attributable to disposable bags. PlasTaxes, which tax customers at the register for using plastic bags when shopping, were first launched by the Irish. John Roach of National Geographic reported in 2008 about the worldwide momentum that’s been building from the time when Ireland instilled a PlasTax in 2003. The Irish showed they could diminish plastic bag consumption by 90% or more. Momentum is on the rise internationally, predominantly in America. From Washington, DC to Edmonds, WA to North Pole, AK, communities and governments are creating a global trend to cut back the unsafe environmental effects of disposable shopping bags. In the great state of Hawaii, the governing body is at this time considering a bill to ban single-use plastic bags (SUP), or to establish a minimal charge make use of SUP bags.

Even chief retail stores like Target and CVS are taking action by enacting savings at the register for customers who choose to BYOB or just carry-out their stuff without a bag. For the naysayers, it’s opportune to disregard recent momentum in reducing disposable bag waste. But to a few, the wide-spread adoption of eco-friendly recycled bags is inevitable. Look at the way smoking is becoming taboo in America. Indoor smoking bans have caught on like wild-fire. In a similar way, who is to say the usage of disposable bags won’t become taboo one day within the (hopefully near) future? The use of eco-friendly recycled grocery bags is certainly gaining steam. Our individual choices to take our recycled shopping bags can go a great deal farther than we think. That’s what BYOB is all about.

Obviously, plastic and paper bags need to be recycled and it’s important to bear in mind a bunch of large retailers including Albertsons and Wal-Mart will recycle plastic bags for you (just need to bring them your accumulated stash). That being said, a BYOB shopping plan can make your life much simpler because there is no longer a need to accumulate that cabinet filled with plastic bags or figure out what and when to deal with it. Keeping a few eco bags inside your car or backpack is a good way to ensure you possess them when needed. So give back this year by remembering to BYOB! Whether it be at a convenience store, the shopping mall, or while grocery shopping, we can make a change for our environment and help lift awareness one transaction at a time. In the struggle to eliminate disposable shopping bag waste, 2010 is our moment.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

Albert Jefferson is a highly accomplished author debating environmental and sustainability issues also dispersing the principles to corporations to make use of eco bags and other eco promotional products to advertise both their brand name and awareness for this world.

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