I'm doing a Science Editorial on if plastic bags should be discontinued- what do you think?
Plastic bags should be discontinued forever. Most of the people in my town use cloth bags anyway, and the people who still use plastic recycle them at the grocers.
Plastic bags should definitely be discontinued or at least people shouldn't get them for free. Plastic bags usually end up being thrown away inappropriately, that is people just throw them away outside, and then small animals and birds get stuck in them and suffocate. If people had to pay for them, they would probably re-use them. Also it uses too much energy (and causes too much pollution) to generate plastic bags. Paper bags or re-usable bags are better alternatives. :))
1,000 years in the landfill. Go back to paper, or a lot of stores are encouraging people to bring their own cloth bags.
Can you imagine a world without plastic bags? Plastic is lightweight, strong, chemical and water resistance. Bringing your own bag(textile?) to the grocer will cut down the dependent on plastics but there are still occasions when we still will need them. The talk about environmental pollution, it is really not the fault of plastics but the people who use them. In most cities, people reuse the plastic grocery bags to contain their trash. Without plastic grocery bag, people will resort to plastic garbage bag for trash. The plastic garbage bags are normally larger and thicker. That is what happened in one country where most people bring their own bags to shops due to the high tax on plastics bag. Now the country is using much more plastics but in the form of garbage bag. It is not that only plastic grocery bag will solve our trash problem, but at this point in time we do not have a better and cheaper alternative. It is not true that recycling plastics will use up too much energy and cause pollution. One needs to visit a plastics processing plant to understand how it is done. However, recycling of paper involves not only a lot of energy but also a lot of clean water and in some cases, bleach. Plastic may not be perfect but it is still a viable alternative for bags with its lower carbon footprint than most other raw materials but like all depleting resources in the world we need to be more responsible and use it sparingly. I encourage users of plastic bag to consider the 3 Rs when using plastic bag. “Recycle”, “Reuse” and yes sometime “Refuse”.
From what I've gathered, they are a better choice than paper bags. Paper bags require the use of trees, which leads to deforestation, and the associated use of heavy machinery and such to cut down said trees. Paper bags also require the use of more chemicals and glues than plastic bags to manufacture. Also paper bags are much heavier than a plastic bag of the same size, which means they take more energy to distribute them. On the other hand plastic bags are lighter,stronger, and easier to manufacture. It is true they they don't decompose as quickly as paper bags, but they are superior in just about every other way.
