The NTD Files: Plastic Bags and Plastic Bottles

Full Disclosure: I work for a company who is introducing a line of reusable bags into the grocery market. I took the job because i thought i could make a differenceand i’m writing this blog for the same reason.

Plastic is everywhere. From the second we’re born (diapers), to the minute we die (syringes, IV bags, diapers again) we’re covered in it. And to be honest, it probably isn’t entirely a bad thing. A lot of stuff in our lives is better because of plastic. Still our lives have become so good, so abundant with luxury that we’re getting ourselves into trouble because we depend on it too much.
Do i need a plastic bag full of individually wrapped frozen chicken breasts? No, that’s just ridiculous. I don’t mind my frozen breasts rubbing up against each other all that much.
At my office, instead of a water cooler, we have cases of bottled water that are free to anyone. We also have a polycarbonate product — including a water bottle — that we sell, yet most people grab a 16.9 oz bottle, drink it and dump it in the can…i will give us some credit though, we have a recycling program and the person who runs it (my dad) is an absolute tyrant. There isn’t a day that goes by when he doesn’t yell at someone for throwing something recyclable away.

Anyway, all this story telling is leading up to some absolutely raw horror that i have come across on-line while researching for this project. American’s use 100 billion plastic grocery bags a year. In the time it takes me to type this paragraph, we’ll use 100,000. The average bag is used for less than 12 minutes in its entire life span and less than 1% of them will be recycled. Even if they are put in a recycling can, there is a good chance that the city’s recycling center isn’t capable of handling them (Phoenix, for instance, cannot). So when a bag is recycled in my town, the city of Phoenix takes them out of their recycling equipment and sends them to the dump (where NOTHING biodegrades, if you didn’t know). Same goes for plastic bottles…in fact, when you finish a plastic bottle and put the lid on it and throw it away, it takes up more room because of the dead air inside of it.

(Picture: chrisjordan.com)

Furthermore, when these bags and bottles fly around on the streets, enter the storm drains or are barged to the dump (thus flying off or falling into the water) they enter the oceans where they litter every square inch of every ocean in the world. Plastic netting, bags, bottles, etc. have been found in the most remote islands of the world including on the ice of both poles.

Much of this plastic gets caught up in ocean currents and moved around the world…in the case of the North Pacific Gyre, it gets caught up in a vortex twice the size of Texas. View Animation Here

(Read more about the Gyre here, here, here and here)

Furthermore, the life cycle of plastic starts as a plastic pellet that is usually shipped somewhere for production.

When these containers of plastic pellets fall off ships into the ocean, when the trucks crash, when they become a biproduct of the process, they enter the soil and water. Plastic takes thousands of years to photodegrade in a natural environment (Biodegrade means something breaks down back into the environment. Photodegrade means it breaks into little pieces that may hide in the environment but never truly re-enter the ecosystem.) and so when they are ingested by an animal and that animal dies and decomposes, the plastic is placed back into the environment almost as good as new. It never goes away.

The good news now is that we’ve reached a tipping point of plastic awareness, at least in the plastic bag arena. In many cities around America, governments are discussing plastic bag legislation and many companies (Ie. Whole Foods) are stepping up efforts to eliminate plastic bags from their stores. China (China of all people?!?) has banned plastic bags under .30 mil thickness, many African countries have also stepped in, Ireland started in 2002 with a tax that has reduces usage by 95%!

Companies everywhere are starting to pay more attention (i hesitate to use the word “bandwagon” because it implies something that won’t last) to the environment. Recently, at the International Housewares Show in Chicago, i found major companies making legitimate efforts. Brooms and broom handles made of post-consumer bottles (things are post-consumer when they’ve been used by an end-buyer but not “recycled”. Recycled, by definition, means that an object can be turned back into itself. When a bottle is “recycled” but then turned into something that can’t be recycled, it’s called de-cycled.), Simple Green had a hopping booth because despite having been in business doing the Eco-friendly thing for decades, they’ve just now found themselves at the forefront of the movement. The best idea (and Simple Green didn’t come up with it) is for your household cleaners and chemicals to be concentrated into tablet form. Seriously, why is this just now happening? Think about it…when you buy Windex, you’re buying a bottle of water with a few glass-cleaning, non-streaking chemicals in it. This bottle started as powdered chemicals until Windex added water, packaged them up into a heavy box of other water-filled bottles, shipped a heavy truck-full (wasting gobs of fuel, space and energy) to your local store, where it took up valuable shelf space. Why can’t you own your own permanent spray bottle, add a tablet, fill with water and create your own Windex, Clorox, Febreeze, etc?? It seems so obvious, yet, i had never heard it mentioned before last week.

The effects of plastic bags on the environment may be slightly overblown, but if we can reduce harm to the environment in any way, isn’t that worth it? If we can take the burden off of our landfills, reduce the price of goods and our dependence on oil (plastic is an oil-based product, not to mention the shipping costs of such a clumsy, heavy product), why wouldn’t we want to try? What’s the harm in using less of it?

The bottom line is that we need to find ways to eliminate plastic in as many ways as possible. Think of the bottles under the sink, think of the bags at the grocery store, think of the packaging your clothes come in (especially at the dry cleaner)…there are plenty of ways to eliminate plastic in your life and it’s time to start.

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• #24-some questions answered
• Rethink Your Recycling
• do something…different
• Recycling plastic bags not the answer

~ by adammackwright on March 28, 2008.