Plastic Shopping bags should be banned in the United States

For the majority of the public, it is a normal practice to take a plastic shopping bag at the counter while checking out. Plastic bags bring people great convenience, they take one while shopping and throw it away after using it. A massive amount of plastic bags are manufactured, used, and, for the majority, improperly disposed every day. Though plastic bags are light, versatile, and easy to use, this improperly disposed litter enters the environment and poses a great threat to human well-being, marine animals and is hard to recycle, thus, a prohibition should be placed on plastic bags.

Plastic shopping bag pollution has become a serious issue in the United States. The United States consumed over 4.14 million tons of plastic bags and other products in 2017 (McGinty, 2020, p3). However, among all these wastes, only 9.4% of them were recycled, whereas the others were landfilled and burnt (McGinty, 2020, p3). Plastic bag wastes are everywhere, it is even been found under 3,6000 feet, in the deepest place in the world: the Mariana Trench (The Maritime Aquarium, 2022). Plastic bag pollution is an emergency that should be reacted immediately, otherwise, its harm would dramatically affect the world.

These unproperly disposed plastic enter the environment and transfer into the human body and then leads to health problems. According to David Azoulay, a report author and managing attorney at the Center for International Environment Law, plastic waste is associated with diseases like cancers, diabetes, organ problems, and birth defects (as cited in Bienkowsk,2019, p2). To be more specific, some resins and additives produced while manufacturing, which are invisible and hard to detect, can lead to cancer, burning plastic emits toxic gases, and even customers are at risk of inhaling or ingesting toxic particles when bags are in their hands (Bienkowsk,2019, p2). These impacts are invisible but might lead to serious consequences on people's well-being.

Not only do plastic bags affect people's immediate health, but it also poses a continuous threat. Plastics last extremely long, up to hundreds of years in natural conditions, which makes them a long-lasting hazardous source to people’s health. It will keep affecting the current generation and many generations to come. These bags are broken down into extremely small pieces and enter the human body, into lungs, livers, spleens, and kidneys, and can even be passed on to newborn babies (United Nations, 2022 para.22). They will release toxic chemical compounds in the human body. Methyl mercury, plasticizer, and flame retardants, which are chemicals related to plastic, after entering the human body, will cause health problems (United Nations, para.22, 2022). This evidence shows that plastic bags are a long-term threat to the human body and can even be passed on to the next generations. Therefore, they should be banned immediately to minimize the consequences.

Apart from the most direct influence on the human body, plastic bag pollutants are causing undesirable consequences to the world's ecosystems. One of the most heavily impacted parts is the one that covers over 70% of the Earth's surface, the ocean. One way plastic destroys the marine ecosystem is by killing animals. Animals might intentionally take in plastic bags because they thought those are their food. When they are ingested, they may be a direct barrier in the digestion system and the toxic chemical they released might kill animals as well (Liu et al, p.2, 2022, Kiener, 2022, p6). This results in 100 million marine lives being claimed annually, and evidence shows that animals living on the ground are equally affected (Kiener, 2022, p6). Meanwhile, plastic bags might also affect creatures by accidents. Plastic debris might directly twist around animal bodies and prohibit their movement (Kiener, 2022, p6). Resulting of being intentionally and accidentally effected by plastic bag debris, marine animals' lives were claimed, and leads to a drop in the varsity and number drop.

Not only plastic bag debris might kill marine animals, but may also increase the type of creatures, like microorganisms. However, the increasing number of marine microorganisms is not necessarily a good sign. Microplastics can be the carrier to help the spread of marine organisms.

Dr. Stephanie L. Wright(2013), a researcher from Imperial College London, and her colleagues found that micro plastic has high surface area to volume ration, which means its chances of getting into contact with micro-organism is high. Thus, microplastic could carry micro-organisms and organic pollutants to different places in the ocean and interrupt the food chain there (p.2). These micro creatures are introduced to a new place and directly break into the food chain. A small disturbance in the food chain might be amplified, causing the existing ecosystem to become corrupted. Some components of the ecosystem might die whereas others may be overpopulated. Due to the severe damage plastic debris has on marine animals and the ocean ecosystem, plastic shopping bags should no longer be allowed to be provided.

Plastic bag waste in nature poses a serious threat to human beings and the marine ecosystem. The reason why they entered nature is that they are hard to recycle. Most plastic wastes are landfilled or burnt because plastic materials are hard to recycle and dispose. Traditional plastic lasts hundreds of years to degrade in natural conditions. Unlike glass or tin products, the recycling process of plastic material is complicated to a great extent. Plastics made of different ingredients and be recycled for different times have to be classified before recycling, otherwise, the final product would be in low quality (Kiener,2022, p7). Therefore, with the current technology, recycling plastic requires a large amount of input in funds and human resources ,and is not feasible to cope with the amount of plastic discarded every day.

Besides the difficulty of reusing plastic waste, some recycling strategy produces negative effects on the environment. Stahl, Jr., Ralph G. (2022), says, “Not all “recycled” plastic gets reused” (p.2095). He pointed out that some companies label their works “recycle” but didn’t turn plastic wastes into something that can be reused. (Stahl,2022,p.2095) For example, some recycling companies just burn plastic for electricity, which emits toxic gases into the atmosphere. In 2017, over 0.79 million tons of plastic bags were incinerated for electricity and by the time of 2025, 18 million tons of greenhouse gasses will be emitted into the atmosphere due to the incineration of plastic (McGinty, 2020, p3). So far, the process claimed to reuse plastic is not capable of reusing plastic in an environmentally friendly way, instead, they make the fragile environment even worse. Therefore, in order not to make the environment even worse, plastic bags should be banned directly rather than trying to be recycled.

It could be argued that traditional, single-use plastic shopping bags can be replaced by bags made of bio-degradable materials, which can be decomposed by microbes in nature and does no harm to the environment. Several types of microorganisms and enzymes have been discovered to be capable of decomposing certain plastic materials (Ru et al, 2020, p2). Bio-degradation technology might help to decompose plastic wastes in the future, resolving the problem of plastic pollution.

Admittedly, though biodegradation seems promising, it has several restrictions which prohibit it to become a solution to plastic pollution. One of them is biodegradable plastic bags can only decompose under some conditions. In certain locations, those bags stay the same as traditional plastics. Researchers at the University of Pisa have found out that, under the sea surface, certain plastics that are claimed to be biodegradable just sit on the sea floor, and they do not decompose at all (Balestri et al, 2017, p.762). If plastic bags cannot be decomposed in the oceans then implementing this technology and resolving the issue of plastic pollution may be extremely challenging. Therefore, banning the use of plastic shopping bags, and cutting the pollutants from the source, might be a more promising way out.

Plastic shopping bags, one of the most common items in people’s daily life, and also a major plastic pollution source, should be banned because of their harm to human health and the marine ecosystem, as well as the restriction on biodegrading them. Though the prohibition may make a significant change in the plastic pollution issue, the fact that people's life will be less convenient without plastic bags cannot be ignored. Thus, having a green, harmless, and cost-effective material to be used as the ingredient for shopping bags should be the next target.

References

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