(HOST) Next time the clerk at the checkout asks "Paper or plastic?" and you’ve forgotten to bring along your reusable canvas bags, commentator Ted Levin would like you to consider this.
(LEVIN) Plastic is made from ethylene, a petroleum byproduct. So a plastic bag contributes far more to global warming than a paper bag does, since paper is a wood byproduct and trees are a renewable resource. Of course, reusable canvas bags are best, but in a world adrift in a sea of plastic bags, if I have to choose between paper and plastic, I’ll take paper.
The EPA reports that Americans use approximately 84 billion plastic bags every year. Making that many takes twelve million barrels of oil. TWELVE MILLION BARRELS. And that doesn’t include plastic sacks and wraps.
Plastic bags are ubiquitous, drifting on planetary tides and river currents, washing up on beaches and tumbling down city streets. In the ocean, leatherback sea turtles make the often fatal mistake of thinking they’re jellyfish – the turtles main food source. The Marine Research Foundation in California reports that 100,000 marine mammals die each year in the North Pacific from eating plastic bags or becoming entangled in plastic.
Plastic bags can survive thousands of years in landfills. They don’t biodegrade. They photo-degrade. Sunlight degenerates plastic into tiny, toxic particles that enter soil, water, and the food chain. In the ocean, they now outweigh the surface zooplankton six to one. That’s six pounds of tiny plastic particles for every pound of zooplankton, a cornerstone of marine food webs.
Plastic bags are now so widespread that a cottage industry has developed in Africa to weave discarded bags into hats.
Here’s a brief history of our love affair with plastic bags. In 1957 Baggies and sandwich bags first appeared on the market. Then dry cleaners discovered the convenience of plastic. By 1966, rolled plastic bags had arrived in the produce section of grocery stores.
In 1969 the New York Sanitation Department pronounced plastic garbage bags safer, cleaner and less noisy than trashcans. In 1977, plastic bags first appeared as an option in grocery checkout lines and by 1996 four out of every five grocery- bags were plastic.
A few municipalities have decided that durability is more important than disposability. Last March the city of San Francisco banned plastic bags despite the threat of being sued by several corporations.
In 2001 Ireland consumed 1.2 billion plastic bags. In 2002, in the hope of changing consumer behavior, Ireland instituted the Plastax, assessing a fee of fifteen cents for every plastic bag, much like Vermont’s five-cent surcharge for soda and beer cans. It worked. Ireland reduced its use of plastic bags by ninety percent.
Every Time I visit the deli section of my favorite grocery store I bring plastic bags for reuse. Sometimes they oblige me. Other times not. It’s a continuous challenge, which leads me to believe that the war on the environment may be the only war we’re winning.
Ted Levin is a nature writer and photographer.