The dangers of plastic bags

Volunteers gather on the shores of some of the nation’s oldest national treasures to remove trash from the water and the beach. Plastic bags, dog waste and metal cans are just a few of the more than twenty items registered by the Blue Ocean Society of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Armed with gloves and plastic bags, Cooper and I set out to pitch in and recover waste that is either ignorantly discarded or purposefully overlooked.

Dr. Richard Bailey, executive director of a volunteer task force in California, is more concerned with the plastic bags that get soaked and sink to the bottom. “We have a lot of bottom-dwelling animals: shrimp, shellfish, sponges,” she says. “It’s like you’re eating at your table and someone comes along and throws a plastic sheet on your table and on you.”

My son Cooper and I fished over 10 plastic bags from the bay, 8 piles of dog droppings from the beach along with cigarette butts, candy wrappers and a soccer ball. As we worked, numerous passers-by thanked us for our efforts; Cooper smiled and thanked them back. There are billions more where they came from, and our oceans are in trouble as a result.
Tea plastic bags it is a symbol of convenience, the most abundant consumer item on Earth, numbering in the trillions. Made from petroleum or natural gas, the environmental impacts of the manufacturing process are numerous, and studies show that some bags contain lead, which has been shown to damage the brain, kidneys, and reproductive system, cause birth defects, slow growth, and cause Hearing problems.

Americans throw away 100 trillion plastic bags every year wasting about 12 million barrels of oil. Only 1 percent of plastic bags they are recycled worldwide (about 2 percent in the US), with the rest persisting for centuries. “They’re so streamlined that even when disposed of properly they can fly off and become trash,” says Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste.

Go to any parade and you’ll see several washes in the nearby canal. Plastic bags they have been found in the bellies of albatross in remote areas. The floating bags look like jellyfish to hungry marine mammals. Research suggests that more than a million birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die each year from encounters with plastic. There are 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in every square mile of ocean. In the North Pacific Gyre, a large vortex of ocean currents, there is now a swirling mass of plastic estimated to be twice the size of Texas.

Ireland has a 22 pence tax on plastic bags has reduced usage by more than 90 percent. In Bangladesh, where plastic bags cause flooding by clogging drainage, bags are prohibited. San Francisco and Oakland have banned the use of plastic bags Allowing only paper bags with at least 40 percent recycled content. Meanwhile, other communities across the country, including Santa Monica, California, New Haven, Conn., Annapolis, Maryland, and Portland, Oregon, are considering clamping down on bags.

Tea problem with plastic bags is that they last forever. Plastic does not biodegrade.

That’s not the only problem, dog, debris doesn’t last forever, but it still causes big problems, as Cooper and I learned during the beach cleanup. Reusable grocery bags are a solution to plastic invasion. Invest in some quality shopping bags, the whales and dolphins thank you.