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The Journey of a Plastic Bag

According to Debi Kimball, author of Recycling in America, the plastics industry uses five of the top six chemicals that the EPA lists as most hazardous waste during the initial production of virgin plastics (Kimball 45). Since plastic bags are made from these nonrenewable resources they create more greenhouse gases and a higher dependency on foreign oil. When plastic bags reach recycling plants, they tangle up recycling units causing plants to close down for days so workers can manually cut them free from conveyor belts and/or machinery. However, disposing plastic bags in the trash leads them in landfills where they float to different destinations. .
             As termed by Lisa Kaas Boyle, a writer for Plastic Pollution Coalition, plastic bags have infamously become known as the Urban Tumbleweed (Boyle). Once they have reached the landfills, aerodynamic plastic bags end up in trees, boarding streets and highways and ultimately in pipes and drains resulting in flooding. Their threat to our worlds oceans and its marine life is immense. More than a million birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die every year from eating or getting entangled in plastic (Mieszkowski). Hungry sea critters, such as sea turtles are suffering greatly from mistaking plastic bags as plump jellyfish, one of their main meals. Imagine enjoying a meal and suddenly having a plastic tarp thrown over the table. This is a scenario animals on land and in the ocean are experiencing daily from this aerodynamic material. The journey a plastic bag takes after the short transportation of a gallon of milk or a single prescription is mind boggling. Students and shoppers should be educated on the dangerous potential these simple daily items have on our environment. If people knew the type of damage plastic bags were creating to our environment, maybe they would be more willing to switch to biodegradable or reusable bags, which would put a halt to the expansion of plastic bags.


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