Bag It

The documentary “Bag it” has made an impact the way I view plastic and especially plastic bags. Plastic is an amazing material used in mostly everything we own. If it is not made of plastic it comes wrapped in plastic. The bad thing is that plastic does not go away.  No one knows how long it takes for plastic to decompose. Some plastic can be recycled or reused but plastic bags are not recyclable. There are many places around the world that have banned the use of plastic bags in order to help the environment. However; in the U.S. the American Chemistry Council are not against the use of plastic bags. Producing plastic bags makes a lot of people rich since so many bags are used every day. Trying to get rid of plastic bags will be difficult because the system is too corrupted and it seems that we care more about making money than making our environment cleaner.

Sadly humans are throwing trash into the ocean. More than 100 thousand marine animals die every year from eating plastic. Many fishes and turtles are found dead and inside their stomachs they have found large quantities of plastic bags. Birds also are dying and what they find in their stomachs is plastic caps from all kinds of bottles.

Plastic bottles are another plastic item that is affecting our environment. Plastic is made from petroleum and natural gases. It takes about a quarter a bottle of petroleum to make a single plastic bottle. Then if you add transportation costs, in order to make one plastic bottle a half bottle of petroleum is needed.  Regrettably some bottles get only one time use because people do not recycle or the bottle is not recyclable.  

The production of plastic is not going to stop. What humans can do to help the environment is less consumption. If we don’t demand plastic as much, especially plastic bags and bottles, the production will reduce and there will be less plastic bags in the ocean and less dead marine animals. The way I decided to help is by reusing bottle water and bringing my own bags to the grocery store and not buying plastic bottles.