5.2. ECCSR 05-18-2016 - Laserfiche WebLink

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use time is 12 minutes. So after those 12 minutes people are done with the bag, but it continues to damage the environment after the purpose of the bag is complete. 1. Plastic bags kill marine life. Annually tens of thousands of seals, whales, birds, and turtles die because of plastic bags in the ocean. Lots of animals mistakenly take the plastic bags to be jellyfish. One study found that one in three leatherback sea turtles have plastic in their stomachs, and it is usually plastic bags. When they swallow the bags, it blocks their digestive track causing them to become buoyant and unable to dive for food. This causes them to slowly starve to death while floating on the surface of the ocean. 2. Plastic bags jam and damage sorting machines at most recycling plants. Unless you take your bags to a plastic bag-specific recycling facility, they are going to a landfill or into the ocean. Also, there is really no market for recycled plastic bags, and because of issues surrounding cleanliness and the high cost of sorting, many bags that are sent to plastic bag recycling facilities still end up in landfills. Only about 3% of plastic bags produced are ever actually recycled. 3. Producing plastic bags is also brutal on the environment. Plastic bag production requires petroleum, a non-renewable resource. Drilling for petroleum wreaks havoc on the environment, and plastic bag production uses up an estimated 8% of our oil resources. 4. The plastic company is not being truthful. Just like the tobacco industry tried to convince us all by any means necessary that cigarettes are not actually bad for your health, the plastics industry is up to the same thing. They are making claims that plastic bags are really just fine for the environment and sponsoring ads to convince people to vote against bag bans in local elections. They are funding studies that say that reusable bags are bad for our health because they found E. coli in 12% of the bags they tested. Although this is