I know animals eat them and choke and stuff but I use grocery plastic bags for my trash bags in the house. Banning grocery plastic bags would mean that I would need to BUY trash bags, instead of getting them free from the grocery store.
Plastic does not biodegrade and it ends up in oceans just sitting there to be eaten by marine life in which it kills the animals. Plastic bags are made from oil.We burn oil to make plastic bags. With oil burning it leads to carbon dioxcide being let into the air which is contributing to global warming.But there is a solution is that to bring your own bag to the store and grocery bags are not free they charge tax at the stores.
Banning the bags would have a great impact on the environment. Yes, in a land fill they are buried and can last a very long time. But, when the bags make it to the oceans they are even more dangerous. The bags can float on the ocean currents and may even circle the globe. Often, they are captured by the circular rotation of these currents that traps the plastic bags with other plastic debris and holds this stuff there. One example of these rotating currents is north of Hawaii that covers an area the size of Texas. This is not the only area, there are two more circular rotating currents in the eastern Pacific and more in other oceans and seas What happens next is deadly.The sunlight, with its ultraviolet light, breaks down the plastic much faster then in land fills. The light turns to a soft, thick jell that is eaten by the plankton and continues up the food chain till people eat the fish and/or Shellfish. This happens all over the globe and also in fresh water lakes, rivers, and reservoirs. This also may or will effect the quality of drinkable water.
The paper or plastic debate is pretty much a dead heat. Plastic is more easily recycled into higher value items than paper but fewer plastic bags get collected for recycling plus since they are just flimsy plastic bags, they can't be put in the usual single stream recycling bin for collection as they would wrap around the sorting mechanisms and require the machinery to be stopped while the bags are untangled from the equipment. Plastic bags require less energy and produces less pollution to produce than paper bags and requires less energy and volume to transport to market. In terms of those that make it to the landfill, plastic bags take up less volume and though they don't biodegrade, they could be designed to do so as it's just hydrocarbon polymers. Paper bags, like all wood fibers do not biodegrade in an anaerobic landfill, it takes an aerobic environment like a compost bin for paper to decompose, fortunately fewer paper bags make it to the landfill as for some reason, people believe paper to be more easily recycled than plastic when the inverse is true. In theory, plastic would be a clear environmental winner if people were to actually bring them back to the grocery store's plastic bag recycling bin but due to public ignorance, that never happens. Every time I've taken my plastic bags in to be recycled, my bags are the only ones in the bin. Plastic bags are bad because people are bad despite their best intentions. My parents live in Canada where the Superstore has been charging for plastic bags to encourage reusable bag use for several decades now. To get free plastic bags, my parents simply take them from those rolls of plastic bags in the meat department or the produce department. At the Superstore, these bags tend to be much thicker than at the other grocery stores.
I think you raise a good point. Banning grocery plastic bags will be a bonus for those who make trash bags. We all like to feel like we're a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem. Recycling our some of our rubbish, installing energy efficient light globes and lobbying against plastic bags are just a few of the ways in which many of us are able to continue to think well of ourselves on a planet buckling under the burden of so many people. By impressing our self-righteousness on others, many of us are able to avoid acknowledging the fact that we are in deed, all a part of the problem...all 7 billion of us. There have never been more people living off this planet as there are at this minute and every day our numbers grow by almost a quarter of a million. Reducing consumption is a wonderful notion but not nearly as wonderful as the notion of reducing numbers of consumers or, at the very least, not increasing the numbers of consumers. We can argue until we're blue in the face about who's consuming what and who should be consuming less until we wipe ourselves out. The simple fact is, whether we live in a tent in the Sudan or a mansion in Hollywood, so long as our bodies produce head each of us consumes Earth's precious limited natural resources.
As you say, plastic bags are bad because animals can eat them and choke. Plastics take hundreds of years to decompose so they are a long term threat to the environment. Its great that you re-use the bags. Many other folks also re-use them and/or recycle the bags. Unfortunately many, many other people are not so considerate. Even when they toss them in the trash, the bags are often blown away by the wind and get into the environment. The hope is that by banning the bags altogether there will be greatly fewer in existence and thus causing pollution. Of course, banning the bags will mean some inconvenience, but saving the planet won't happen without everyone making an effort.
