1.0 Introduction Plastic bags are widely used as an easy medium for packaging items purchased from groceries and shopping outlets. However, the irresponsible use of plastic bags has led to a number of impacts; particularly towards the environment. The negative implications on the use of plastic bags causes conflict where there is a need for the manufacture of plastic bags, especially the usual conventional bags used for shopping, to be reduced or banned. This brings up questions on whether the roles of these plastic bags should be substituted with a product that is more environmental-friendly such as reusable grocery bags as part of the solution for the banning of plastic bags. 2.0 Chemical Background 2.1 Background of Plastic Bags Plastic bags are made of a type of polymer called polyethylene, which is a flexible synthetic polymer produced from the polymerisation process of ethylene. Ethylene, or ethene is a gaseous hydrocarbon component usually obtained by the splitting of ethane hydrocarbon. Ethene molecules are usually made up of two units of methane molecules of with double carbon-to-carbon bonds. When the monomer units of ethene are polymerised in the presence of catalysts, a long polymeric chain of repeating ethylene monomers is produced.[1] These long chained molecules can be formed linearly or branched to produce different types of polyethylene components such as high-density polyethylene, or HDPE and low-density polyethylene, or LDPE.[1] In the production of polyethylene, appropriate additives are added into the polymer for the purpose of preservation of the polyethene, or to customise the polymer component according to its later use. Examples of additives that are added are additives that enable the polymer to susta... ... middle of paper ... ...pic/1589019/plastic-pollution ‘Environmental Impacts’, Northern Territory Environment Protection Authority, viewed 13 April 2014, http://www.ntepa.nt.gov.au/waste-pollution/plastic-bag-ban/enviroimpacts Rosenthal, E 2013, ‘Is it Time to Bag the Plastic?’ The New York Times, 18 May, viewed 13 April 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/sunday-review/should-america-bag-the-plastic-bag.html?_r=0 Magaziner, L 2014, ‘Plastic Bags: Convenient and Cruel’, Scholastic Scope, 62, 8, pp. 20-21, viewed 16 April 2014 (Academic Search Complete @EBSCOhost). ‘Are Reusable Bags Greener than Conventional Plastic Shopping Bags?’ 2012, All About Bags, viewed 13 April 2014, http://www.allaboutbags.ca/reusablesgreenerrmyth.html Green, K.P & DeMeo, E 2013, ‘The Crusade Against Plastic Bags’, Fraser Forum (2013), pp. 16-26, viewed 13 April 2014 (Business Source Complete @EBSCOhost).
The article Plastic bags are Good for you, by Katherine Mangu-Ward was written to explore the pro’s and con’s of three different types of bags. Which is better between plastic, paper, or reusable bags has always been a debatable question with an opinionated answer. In the article Mangu-Ward characterizes the cause and effect relationships which have lead to the unpopularity of plastic bags in terms of guilt.
Plastic bags have never been free. Instead, their private cost is incorporated into the price of the purchased products, but this is not the only cost of plastic bags for the consumer (Allan 2002). There is additionally a social cost, a price paid for the impact of the pollution upon the aquatic environment and, ultimately, upon the consumers own health. Of the 3.92 billion plastic bags that Australia consumes annually(Commonwealth of Australia 2016), 80 million enter the litter stream, with 1-3% entering Australian waterways (Allan 2002; Dunn, Caplan & Bosworth 2014). About 35% of aquatic life has ingested plastic, resulting in the human consumption of plastic from seafood and eventually leading to increasing cost of healthcare for the consumer
Grocery shopping is something that almost every person in a modern society must do to get their food, however, disposable plastic grocery bags are accumulating on landfills and are polluting our oceans. Environmentalists are now encouraging others to lessen their impact on the environment by opting for reusable bags instead of disposable plastic bags while grocery shopping. Grocery and retail stores have gotten involved in this trend by selling their own reusable bags. This trend of shoppers bringing their own reusable bags with them when shopping is far less harmful for our environment, however, it is uncertain whether people are actually acting in such a way without
Using plastic bags were something everyone feels bad using. We use them everyday in some form or another, but we tend to forget the bad that they do. Plastic bags should not be used or allowed in the U.S because it tends to do more harm than good in our society or world.
First, our community should continue to extend the use of plastic bags because they produce less pollution in the environment. The opponents of plastic bags agreed that limiting the production of plastic is beneficial to the environment because they claimed that “...plastic bags don’t biodegrade…”, therefore, the bags “...often (clog) drainage systems (which) contributed to flooding,” (Doc B). Since plastic bags are easily moveable, they regularly get caught in trees, poles, and even drainage systems; however, the EPA noted that “...paper doesn’t degrade all that much faster than plastics,” (Doc F). Despite being criticized for causing damage to the environment, the rate at which plastic bags degrade is similar to that of paper bags; therefore, this shows that if plastic
Polyethylene (PE) is one of the most commonly used polymers which can be identified into two plastic identification codes: 2 for high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and 4 for low density polyethylene (LDPE). Polyethylene is sometimes called polyethene or polythene and is produced by an addition polymerisation reaction. The chemical formula for polyethylene is –(CH2-CH2)n– for both HDPE and LDPE. The formation of the polyethylene chain is created with the monomer ethylene (CH2=CH2).
Throughout our lives, we’ve been taught that it’s good to recycle and, in return, will save the environment. Common phrases such as “reduce, reuse and recycle” has been encoded to our brain during adolescence in hopes to prolong a future for the generations ahead. As an illustration, one of these attempts at the aid of recycling are reusable grocery bags. I believe that employing reusable grocery bags as an alternative to plastic bags is redundant because it provides a minimal impact to the environment, focuses on the wrong spectrum of recycling, and could be more of a hassle than it is helpful.
In the 1860s, Alexander Parkes developed the first man-made plastic which has now been integrated into almost every aspect of our lives, from the smartphones we use everyday to life changing technologies. Post World War Two, Canadian societies were introduced to plastics and started a disposable trend. Environmentalism forced realization that this disposable trend will generate a huge amount of waste. A movement was then started in 1970 in hopes to reverse the trend and start a new one consisting of reducing, reusing, and recycling waste. In the same time frame plastics were introduced, Canada switched over to the metric system. Switching to the metric system forced many packaging companies to
In light of recent events, a question has arose concerning the use of plastic bags. Some people argue that plastic bags are detrimental to the environment, while others argue that outlawing the use of these bags is unfathomable. On Tuesday, September 30th, 2014 California became the first state in the U.S. to ban the use of single-use plastic bags after a bill was signed by California Governor Jerry Brown. Under this bill, plastic bags will slowly be phased out and will no longer be in use by 2016. But can one argue that this bill is simply irrational? In this essay, I will examine the different opinions of five various sources, in order to better answer the question of whether or not plastic bags should be banned. The first three of these
German Chemist Hans von Pechmann first synthesized Polyethylene by accident in 1898 by heating diazomethane. His colleagues characterized the waxy substance polyethylene due to the fact that they recognized that it consisted of long ethene chains. It was then first industrially synthesized by accident in 1933 by applying extremely high pressure to ethylene and benzaldehyde. Over the years, development of polyethylene has increased due to the additions of catalyst. This makes ethylene polymerization possible at lower temperatures and pressures.1
Since the 1960s when plastic bottles were widely distributed, there have been several negative externalities resulting from their consumption and disposal. Flooding landfills and leaking into water supplies, debris fortified with chemicals that are often ingested by marine life, harmful emissions caused by its incineration, and the difficulty of recycling are just a few of the negative externalities that costs millions in. About 4 percent of the world’s oil production is used as raw materials to fuel the machines that make plastics, and people all over the world are exposed to chemicals from plastic several times each day through the air, dust, water, food and use of consumer
... converting plastic waste into useful products are being affected by pollution; this contamination is found within containers where plastics are collected. But the same risk of pollution carries downside consequences in which workers and people responsible for cleaning and disinfecting the plastic materials are not doing the best to eliminate plastic waste, and to disinfect the infected bacteria and microorganisms from the atmosphere and environment. Organizations from China and India are the largest in the world, they collect and purchase used plastic from United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America (Minguez 2013). These companies do not bother to sanitize the products before the recycling process; for this reason the planet earth is getting a worse environmental condition, and it is destroying lives of living beings, and natural resources as well (Uddin 2014).
The U.S. is late to this party -- the whole EU, China, India, Australia, Rwanda, and many other countries have already instituted full-on bans on plastic bags. Plastics have a huge environmental cost, and this is one simple step we can take toward fixing it. Here are 9 reasons we should ban the bag:
Millions of plastic bags are given out to consumers by supermarkets and stores to carry their goods in. They are also cheap, light, durable, easy to carry and in many cases, free. The most commonly used shopping bag is made of High Density Polyethylene (HDPE). This type is used in the majority of supermarkets and stores. After these bags are used, they often end up in landfills or as litter, roughly only three percent of plastic bags is actually recycled per year (Planet Ark, 2011). The materials used in making plastic bags make them non-biodegradable. According to the science dictionary, 2011 refers to “these materials cannot be decomposed into environmentally safe waste materials by the action of soil bacteria.” These harmful substances are toxic and take approximately four hundred years to break down, or in this case photo-degrade; which is how plastics made from (HDPE) break down. Since they are not biodegradable, they remain in the environment and are absorbed in soil or water (Indian Centre for Plastics in the Environment, 2010). This essay will discuss the various harmful effects of plastic bags, and demonstrate the risks that these bags impose on humans, animals and the environment. It will also discuss a series of suggested solutions that could help reduce plastic bag usage.
Everyone has heard a cashier one time or another mumble, “Paper or plastic?” as he put their groceries in a bag, but do shoppers know the effects of each vessel in which they carry their comestibles? There are many issues and benefits to both paper and plastic. The making and recycling of both paper and plastic bags can harm the environment. One must also look at the costs of making each bag. The convenience of each is also something to look at. Many people jump to conclusion that paper bags are better for the environment without knowing the facts. Since plastic bags are preferred by customers and plastic bags actually do not hurt the environment as much as paper ones do, consumers should feel at ease when choosing plastic.