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Plastic bag ban argumentative essay
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“One of the most ubiquitous and long-lasting recent changes to the surface of our planet is the accumulation and fragmentation of plastic bags,” inscribed David Barnes, the lead author and researcher at the British Antarctic Survey. This statement is unquestionably true. Around five hundred billion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year, and nineteen billion used in California. That’s roughly five hundred and fifty two per person; enough to stretch around the globe over two hundred and fifty times! Plastic bags have molded our communities in many ways making life easier; however, easier doesn’t always necessarily mean better. To begin, plastic bags are terribly effecting our environment and earth’s atmosphere. Seeing that, many ending up either in landfills or in oceans. As well, plastic bags have a detrimental consequence on our ecosystems. Sadly, torturing many wildlife creatures; including ourselves from all the chemicals we consume. Lastly, plastic bags are becoming very costly for shoppers and producers. Considering many resources used to make plastic bags are non-reusable. Hence, plastic bags are leaving a gruesome impact on our world. Therefore, it is imperative that humans reduce the amount of plastic bags we consume. Do you care about the environment you live in? Well, if people continue to use plastic bags our spotless environment will be demolished. The usefulness of a plastic bag can be measured in minutes from the grocery store, unpacking the groceries and then tossed in a garbage bin. To serve the rest of its life as polluter to the earth’s atmosphere. To start off, plastic bags are not biodegradable meaning it could take thousands of years to decompose. Due to this after a plastic bag is inconvenient t... ... middle of paper ... ... banned plastic bags in 2009 and saw a huge decrease in trash amount. In 2006 the litter in square meters was 11.8 on average. However, in 2010 after plastic bags were abolished the litter amount declined to 5.36 square meters. That was a drastic improvement! As well, several cities in America and all over the world have either banned or put a fee on plastic bags. In Hawaii, retailers are no longer allowed to have plastic bags that are not non-biodegradable or forty percent recycled paper. Undoubtedly, there are plenteous reasons why plastic bags should be forbidden. From, plastic bags despoiling our environment to devouring our ecosystems to being a cost consuming product. Planet earth is far away from a plastic free environment. With this in mind, it’s evident that it’s time to take the dangers of plastic bags seriously. Remember keep calm and green on.
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.
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.
Which means their obviously bad for the aquatic marine life environment & are cause many different forms of damage for them & us as one. On p.g. 23 of The New York Times upfront magazine “Birds,fish, sea turtles, & others are getting tangled in plastic bags or mistake them for food & choke”. Someone else might argue that they could the plastic bags in landfills instead of oceans. But that counter- argument is flawed because you’re just polluting by burning plastic which is bad on our part we’re not doing our part to support & taking care of the earth. Plastic in the ocean isn't just bad for plants & animals but for humans too because of the food chain some of us eat animals as a meat source such as aqua marine life like fish. If the fishermen catch fish that have been eating plastic then it's in our food supply if we eat that fish it's gonna be bad for us so many will end up getting sick from the plastic inside of the fish then what will we do our aqua marine food supply will go down the drain we couldn’t eat the fish since it's basically contaminated with plastic that we’re dumping there instead of trying to fix it & getting rid of plastic bags for good for the good of the earth. We’re causing damage towards the earth by dumping all that plastic into the ocean which damages our water supply it’ll poison us although we clean the water it depends on how big the plastic particles are, it’ll make us sick & sense it’s been lying in the oceans could bring in new pathogens &
Every year, an estimated 8 million tons of plastic waste enters our environment, severely polluting oceans, beaches, forests, and even the towns and cities we live in. In the ocean alone, it is believed that 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic pollutes the waters (“Plastic Statistics”, Ocean Crusaders).The majority of plastic pollution can be traced back to single-use items, such as grocery bags, bottles, and plastic packaging. According to United Nations Environment, “At the rate we are dumping items such as plastic bottles, bags and cups after a single use, by 2050 oceans will carry more plastic than fish…” (“UN Declares War on Ocean Plastic”, UN Environment). This pollution is a major problem and endangers not only the environment, but human
Plastic water bottles have been the new trend in ECMS lately. But are they worth the costs? No not in my opinion. One time use plastic water bottles should not be allowed at ECMS. Plastic water bottles are unnecessarily expensive, negative to the environment, and not very healthy for our bodies.
The bill passed against this prevented cites from banning plastic grocery bags or charging an extra fee for the bags. Many argued that current plastic bags are mostly made from recycled items and that they produced the same harm as paper bags. However, other argued that the excess use of these bags and the impact that they cause to the environment is uncontrollable. Several farmers also argued that their animals were becoming sick because they were exposed to them and would often eat them. Many industries would also be affected by this ban, but if we look at the issue with the environment in perspective, the benefits that would come with a reduction of plastic bags is numerous. These bags are consumed every day, and it would be interesting to see how much less damage and other benefits would come from this practice. There are many cities in Texas where this ban was passed on successfully. For example, in a comparison between Austin where the ban was approved, and some of the requirements are that the bags must contain a minimum percentage of recycled content, and Fort Worth were the ban was disapproved. “Advocates of the policy are supported by a comparison with Fort Worth, which has no plastic bag ordinance and had four times the amount of plastic bags in its litter stream as Austin. The amounts were calculated based on local litter sweeps done earlier this year in each city” (Miller par. 6). This shows the benefits of the ban and how it has impacted the cities environment. Other places are still pending the approval and in the other hand Dallas is one of the places where this ban was
One of the most negative impacts that we have created in the ecosystem is the water pollution of plastic. Humans always go to the grocery store and come back with plastic bags of food. What do we do with those plastic bags? Reuse them for doggy bags, we use them as lunch bags, and also trash liners. Everyone just uses them for all sorts of reasons but when they dispose them, they never seem to think about where it might go. Well first of all them...
A narrow rejection of a potential plastic bag ban has spurred up discussion among many newspaper journalists, one of them being Adam B Summers. In his editorial “Bag ban bad for Freedom and environment,” Summers used estimation, an appeal to Logos, and an appeal to Ethos to demonstrate the toll of a plastic bag ban would far outweigh its benefits.
In the United States, several laws have been enforced in order to create an efficient community that won’t manifest trouble. Citizens have viewed a couple of these rules as “Dumb” or “Good” for multiple reasons. Anyhow, three of the most controversial bills have included some type of relation to plastic bags, dog ‘waste’, and the pursuit of bears. To begin, plastic bags have become an exceptional necessity in the US, but , in some cities, like San Jose and Sunnyvale, have become limited. Even if plastic has obliterated itself from a consumer's view, something has not disappeared, yet.
... 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).
Using plastic bags are second nature to people in this day and age. Warner acknowledges, “Much to the dismay of the environmentally conscious citizens worldwide, the ubiquity of the free plastic carryout bag has bred nonchalant consumers who take this modern convenience for granted” (646). Although some people are conscious about the environment, people strive more for convenience and do not think about the impacts using bags have not only on the environment, but on themselves as well. If something is bad for the environment, it will alternatively be bad for humans as well. When plastic bags are exposed to the sun from being littered all around, the ultraviolet rays cause the substances of plastic bags to weaken. After the substances weaken, the substances become invisible to the naked eye. The substances that are no longer able to be seen are toxic to humans (Warner 649). As a result of plastic bags being littered around, animals consume plastic bags. This is negatively affects humans because animals are often consumed. When humans consume animals like, fish, there can be plastic in the fish’s belly, which then transfers to the humans and this poses a concern for human’s health. Humans are negatively affected by plastic bags because of the toxic chemicals in plastic bags, as well as, consuming animals with plastic in their
In Adam B Summers’ essay he gives valid reasons why plastic bags should not be banned. His essay is persuasive in many ways such as focusing on the effect on the earth and also job cutting. He also gives alternative ways to use a plastic bag. Summers gives examples on how banning plastic bags can lead to worse human damage.
There is a current discussion as to whether or not plastic bags in grocery stores should require a fee. This is mostly brought up because of the amount of plastic waste that humans are creating each year is quickly lowering the health of our planet. Between plastic bottles, bags, and various other products, the amount of waste is drastically increasing and humans seem to fail at recycling as well as they should. This leads people to discuss things like bag taxes to try and promote more people to participate in a more eco-friendly lifestyle. Althought there are positive and negative contributions to every argument, this argument is, for the most part, unreasonable. It is more harmful to our society to add a $0.25 bag tax on plastic bags than it is beneficial. Adding a bag tax is not only inconvient for store employees, it is an excessive amount to tax and many low income families will not be able to afford it.
It is sad to say but humans have played their part in deteriorating the earth. We have polluted and killed the very thing that takes care of us. If you ride by any lake or river you find trash and debris around it. In the “The Call of the Wild” the author says that we have committed war against the earth by the dumping of poisons and explosives upon it (337). Unfortunately, plastics are the things that are doing the most harm to our environment. Plastics are convenient and we use them everyday and these are the things that we find in the oceans, rivers and lakes. They are harmful to the earth as well as human health by directly intoxicating us with lead, cadmium and mercury. Plastic debris laced with harmful chemicals are often found inside of our marine life and can poison them. Plastic can survive for thousands of years and many invasive species are found in them which can disrupt our habitats. We need to limit our consumption of plastics and make sure that they are disposed of in their proper places.
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.