Author: nas5799

In order to propose legislation regarding plastic bags, exact parameters must be defined. There are three main types of plastic used in single-use plastic bags. The first is High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE), most commonly making up the bags in grocery stores, convenience stores, delis, and restaurants. There is also Low-Density Polyethylene (LDPE) which is what garment bags from the dry cleaner are made of, and Linear Low-Density (LLDPE) which makes up thick, glossy bags found at places like clothing stores and the mall. Although it would be preferable to eliminate all types of plastic bags, it is more realistic to focus on High-Density Polyethylene bags because they are the most feasible to phase out.

Therefore, for the purpose of my policy I am focusing on the elimination of High-Density Polyethylene bags and the introduction of a tax on paper and reusable plastic bags, in an effort to reach the ultimate goal of using as few plastic bags as possible.

Because the taxation of single-use plastic bags is proven to be successful, particularly in California, I am advocating for all states in the United States of America to adopt legislation similar to the California bag-tax model under Senate Bill 270. Lowering the number of plastic bags being distributed and causing consumers to reconsider the amount of single-use bags they really need will reduce the amount of pollution caused by them; ultimately moving the country towards a more sustainable and waste-free future.

The proposed policy eliminates High-Density Polyethylene bags from all stores and retailers, introduces a new, thicker plastic bag made of 40% recycled polyethylene that can be reused at least 125 times, and places a 10-cent tax to the consumer on every plastic bag or paper bag they opt to take. The store providing the goods will collect the money from the bag tax. For every 10 cents obtained, the store will make 4 cents as an incentive to enforce the policy. 40% of the tax funds will go back to the local municipality and 60% will go to the Environmental Protection Agency for the restoration and preservation of the environment, which includes the cleaning up of plastic bag waste. Exemptions from the 10-cent tax include those on low-income programs such as WIC and SNAP.

Towns, cities, and states that already have their own taxes or bans in place will be required to rewrite their legislation to match this new policy. Most legislation currently in place is very similar to this proposal, therefore it would not be that difficult to change.

It is realistic to implement such a policy because it eliminates the need for millions of bags while still providing an alternative for those who insist on using them. Additionally, the new plastic bags are more environmentally friendly and useful for a longer amount of time. This legislation could realistically be passed in every state because it should please everyone by giving options to the consumer while also giving money back to local governments. When it is first implemented, it is expected that many consumers will act accordingly with the legislation and begin to change their bag-using habits. Over time, many of those who prefer to use plastic bags will see a change in social norms when it comes to shopping and conform by reducing their own bag use. Also, the visible positive environmental effects will cause consumers to realize that their own good bag habits have a direct impact on their community and environment.

The ideal policy actors to make this happen is state governors. They can sign legislation that can put this tax and ban into effect. State representatives in the House of Representatives can also advocate to call for a vote to implement this statewide legislature. These policy actors would be encouraged to implement such policy because it can decrease the state’s amount of litter, bring in more funds to local governments, and make citizens more responsible and environmentally conscious.

Along with the other environmental and financial benefits stated previously, a statewide tax and ban on plastic bags would make great strides for our country in becoming more considerate towards planet Earth. Developing good habits regarding bag use will ideally overlap into other areas where better environmental choices can be made, such as reduced use of other single-use plastics, energy, and water.

Through this policy, citizens will see the benefits that eliminating plastic bags can have, making them more likely to pay attention to other environmental problems and becoming more involved in the solutions. This plastic bag policy is an important step in transforming the United States to become more sustainable and waste-free.

Sources:

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=PRC&division=30.&title=&part=3.&chapter=5.3.&article=2.

As plastic bag ban looms in New York State, shoppers wonder: Now what?

https://www.cawrecycles.org/faq-on-bag-bans

https://www.factorydirectpromos.com/blog/what-are-the-positives-to-banning-plastic-bags/

https://www.factorydirectpromos.com/blog/what-are-the-positives-to-banning-plastic-bags/

Environmental Impact. Effects, Dangers of Plastic Bags

After getting a better sense of what the final product of this civic issues project should look like, I want to start focusing on a more specific topic in order to make it easier to discuss a policy. I am going to dive into a ban on plastic bags, more specifically a nationwide ban since some areas have established their own bans already.

Did you know that every time you do something as simple as shop at the grocery store, you may likely be contributing to one of the largest environmental challenges our world is currently facing? It is that plastic bag that you use once, then toss in the trash without even thinking about. Or the one that accidentally gets left in your cart and blows out onto the streets. Or even the bag you may reuse a few times but still throw out eventually because it is not strong enough to be kept long term. Every time a plastic bag is discarded, it grows the ever-increasing problem of plastic waste that is severely polluting our Earth.

A few compelling facts about single-use plastic bags to get you thinking:

• the lifespan of a plastic bag is around 1,000 years

• the typical New Yorker uses 620 single -use plastic bags per year; New York City alone goes through 5.2 billion a year

• single-use plastic bags are used for an average of 12 minutes

• only 1% of plastic bags are returned for recycling

In 1933, the material polyethylene was created accidentally – but went on to become one of the biggest polluters on planet Earth. In 1965, the plastic bag design was officially patented and introduced in many European countries. It quickly began to replace cloth and paper bags in Europe because they were easier to carry, hygienic, stronger than paper, moisture proof, and not to mention had a plethora of uses. In the late 70s and early 80s, plastic bags began dominating in the United States, with stores like Kroger and Safeway switching to plastic.

It was not until the late 90s that marine scientists discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which contained many plastic bags. Plastic was also being discovered in the stomachs of numerous sea species. Plastic bags look particularly like jellyfish so many animals mistakenly ate them. It was becoming widely known that plastic bags were extremely harmful to the environment and something should be done to limit the production and spread of them.

Many people have proposed some kind of ban or tax on plastic bags that could help solve some of the problem. The first country to implement such ban was Bangladesh in 2002 because of the role plastic bags played in clogging drain systems during floods. As of February 2019, bans with varying degrees of enforcement have been implemented in 55 countries. 31 countries impose a charge per bag to discourage consumers from choosing them.

The United States is currently very mixed when it comes to what to do about plastic bags. California and Hawaii are the two states that have statewide bans, however many cities, towns, and counties throughout the US have their own unique rules and regulations. The website https://www.bagtheban.com/in-your-state/ has an interactive map that allows you to search the country for different legislations that are or will be implemented.

Although there is great progress being made, many places in the United States are actively working against the ban. Arizona and Florida recently passed legislation that “declared that no city or town may ‘impose a tax, fee, assessment, charge or return deposit … for auxiliary containers.'” Missouri and Texas are also looking into similar laws. Because of the clear environmental benefits to banning plastic bags (which I will get into later), I believe nationwide legislation is necessary. I am not sure if a tax or ban would be better but I am going to explore that. I think that this is a reasonable issue to be addressed by the federal government and is agreed on by enough people to make some kind of change. Like lawyer-turned-plastic bag ban advocator Jennie Romer said, “’I get a lot of tea-party-esque emails, but I also get pushback from environmentalists who say, ‘There are bigger things to spend your time on.’ But this is a thing I chose because it is small. Something like climate change — that’s really daunting. With this, you can see a difference.’”

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Sources:

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2015/07/plastic-bag-bans.html?gtm=top&gtm=top

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_sustainability/sustainability/plastic_bag_facts.html

https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/birth-ban-history-plastic-shopping-bag

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_lightweight_plastic_bags

https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/09/20/heres-a-list-of-every-city-in-the-us-to-ban-plastic-bags-will-your-city-be-next/#43f98c363243

In Your State

Proposed Plastic Bag Ban Would Benefit Environment and Economy

https://www.kqed.org/news/11461251/are-plastic-bag-bans-good-for-the-environment

Different Types of Plastic Bags

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/whatstuff/stuff/8238plasticbags.html

https://www.uspolypack.com/Thank-You-T-Shirt-Bags-pk-of-1000-White-10x5x18-14-Microns-18-size-Red-Print-Plastic-Shopping-Bags_p_2825.html

Although the plastic debris in the ocean is a huge problem, there are also other types of pollution that are detrimental to our environment. This blog is dedicated to researching air pollution and land pollution because it is important to understand more than just one type.

Air pollution is the release of harmful chemicals/substances into the air that can have negative affects on humans and the Earth as a whole. Most air pollution comes from the the burning of fossil fuels in energy production, which releases things like carbon dioxide and methane into the air.

There are two main types of air pollution: smog and soot. Smog occurs when nitrogen oxide from fossil fuel emissions reacts with sunlight and other compounds in the atmosphere. Nitrogen oxide comes from power plants, factories, and car exhaust. This reaction results in ground-level ozone which can be very dangerous to the respiratory system and cause eye irritation. Smog also kills plants and is an eyesore, causing a brown and/or gray fog that is commonly seen in big cities. Cities like Los Angeles and Mexico City have a particular smog problem because they are valleys and the smog cannot be easily carried out of the valley by wind.

Soot is a solid or gaseous form of pollution composed of small particles of soil, dust, allergens, and chemicals. It comes from pretty much the same sources as smog. Soot can penetrate the lungs, causing breathing and heart problems and in some cases hasten death.

Another kind of pollution I want to address is land pollution, specifically landfills. A landfill is a method of waste disposal that often involves burying it in soil. This is the oldest form of treatment for garbage and is currently the most common way around the world. The goal of a landfill is to confine waste to the smallest area of land possible and to reduce the waste to the smallest volume possible.

According to the Environmental Literacy Council, landfills consist of “18 percent food scraps, 16 percent plastic, 9 percent rubber, leather, and other textiles, 7 percent each of yard waste, metals, and wood, and 6 percent glass.” However these numbers may be different at any given time because some of these materials decompose faster than others.

Landfills can potentially release “landfill gas” that consists of methane and carbon dioxide. Landfills also burn a large number of the materials which creates dioxins, heavy metals, sulfur, and nitrogen compounds which can run off into rivers if the temperature and air mixture is not optimal. These harmful substances can come in contact with plants and animals. They can cause damage to the respiratory system, the nervous system, kidney damage, and cancer, among other things.

Overall, these other forms of pollution can contribute to the issue of plastic pollution in oceans. It is important to understand things such as air and land pollution in order to fully analyze the effects of them and how the planet is being affected as a whole.

 

Sources:

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/air-pollution-everything-you-need-know#sec1

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/smog/

http://butane.chem.uiuc.edu/pshapley/environmental/l17/4.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill

“Landfills.” The Environmental Literacy Council, 2015, enviroliteracy.org/environment-society/waste-management/landfills/.

For this week’s blog I am going to look more into some of the more specific details of pollution. I still plan to focus primarily on single-use plastics but it may extend into other areas of pollution as well. I’m intending this week’s post to serve as some more background information that will probably be useful as I write the paper on this issue later on in the semester.

According to the website Swimmers Against Sewage, current estimates show that around 8 million pieces of plastic are getting into our oceans every single day. These plastics are coming from a multitude of places such as sewage related debris, litter dropped in towns and cities, and poorly managed bins and landfill sites near the coast. In fact, there are 7 main sources of marine litter that they identify:

In total, there are approximately 51 trillion microscopic pieces of plastic weighing in at 269,000 tons (538 MILLION pounds). And all of this waste stays solid for multiple centuries; a plastic bottle takes about 450 years to break down into small pieces, but never truly going away. These single-use plastic items are particularly detrimental to ocean life as they either become entangled in it or mistake it for food. And if creatures such as fish contain these plastics, odds are that humans are probably consuming harmful chemicals and materials through seafood. In fact, a study conducted by the National University of Ireland showed that 73% of all deep-sea fish have ingested micro plastics. Another study found plastics such as nylon, polystyrene, and polyethylene in the bodies of fish and shellfish. This is just one example of how human littering comes back to negatively affect us.

There a few factors to this issue that make it very hard to fix. First of all, nothing can really be done about the vast amounts of plastic already in the ocean. Approximately only 1% of marine litter floats, while the rest sinks down to the deep ocean floors making it virtually impossible to get. Most of the plastic waste is microscopic too, so it cannot just be scooped out. There is even a region in the Pacific Ocean absolutely riddled with plastic waste, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is the largest of 5 major offshore plastic accumulation zones in Earth’s oceans. The patch has an estimated surface area of 1.6 million square kilometers, approximately double the size of Texas.

Surfers Against Sewage says that it is a “ginormous plastic soup made of confetti like fragments of plastic. It has been imagined that it would take 67 ships 1 year to clean up less than 1% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” Because of areas like these, it is impossible to try to fix the ocean’s pollution problem just by removing it.

Some have proposed that getting rid of all single use plastic products would solve our problem. However, there is a lot more that goes into that decision. The economy relies on the production of many of these items. For example, the plastic bag industry provides 30,900 jobs. Store owners are also being negatively affected because they have to spend lots of their budget on reusable bags in places where plastic bags are banned. And a tax on plastic bags makes it even more difficult for someone on a very low income to shop. These are the kinds of things we must think about when considering putting bans on certain plastic items.

Overall, the plastic packaging industry is worth over $198 billion. While many companies have already promised to use more recycled material in their products/packaging, there is still a challenge in trying to completely change the way they’ve been doing it for years. Eliot Whittington from the University of Cambridge says “It is not as simple as ‘plastic is bad’ so let’s use something else …  It will require a complete change in the way we use product packaging at the moment. Most packaging is now used just once and thrown away. We need to move away from that. It needs some form of leadership from government.” Obviously, this issue will be no easy fix. But despite this, there are some areas that have gone either partially or fully plastic-free.

These 2 major challenges the world faces while trying to reduce our plastic waste are what makes change so difficult. However, there are numerous organizations fighting to make an impact. For my next blog I plan on discussing some of these organizations and possibly also some of the environmental legislation that is currently implemented or that may be in the future.

Sources:

https://www.ecowatch.com/plastics-deep-sea-fish-2536726086.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/plastic-microparticles-fish-flesh-eaten-humans-food-chain-mackerel-anchovy-mullet-a7860726.html

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180705-whats-the-real-price-of-getting-rid-of-plastic-packaging

https://www.theoceancleanup.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch/

“How Plastic Bag Bans Impact the Economy.” This Is Plastics, 10 Feb. 2019, www.thisisplastics.com/economic-impact/how-plastic-bag-bans-impact-the-economy/.

“Plastic Pollution – Facts and Figures • Surfers Against Sewage.” Surfers Against Sewage, 2019, www.sas.org.uk/our-work/plastic-pollution/plastic-pollution-facts-figures/.

 

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.” These words spoken by famous transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are timeless. For centuries, humans have had a deep appreciation for the natural environment and have made efforts to conserve it. As we transformed from connecting with the Earth on a spiritual level to a more empirical one, efforts have grown even stronger to reduce the negative impact that we have on our planet.

The “Green Movement” today is defined as “an important campaign to ensure a sustainable future.” There are many ways in which the United States has implemented policies and methods in order to achieve this. Some important things include the establishment of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, and the establishment of Earth Day in 1970 as well.

In more recent years, new ways of being more environmentally-friendly have emerged. A very popular one is the move to ban plastic products like straws, utensils, and grocery bags, which either take centuries to break down or do not break down at all. This causes them to pile up in landfills and in oceans. In fact, 80% of all ocean pollution is due to single-use plastic products.

Although these items have been known for some time to have harmful effects, there has been a recent surge in the past year or so to eliminate them. This is largely due to a viral video of a marine biologist removing a plastic straw from a sea turtle’s nostril. Once the everyday person saw this pop up on their Facebook or Instagram feed, much more attention and urgency suddenly surrounded the issue. Now major corporations such as Starbucks and even whole cities such as Vancouver and San Francisco have implemented policies to completely eliminate plastic straws and some other single-use plastics.

I am interested in using this blog to explore the impacts of these kinds of implementations. Obviously, some of them are still ongoing and will be difficult to observe effects over time. However I want to explore how our environment has been impacted in the past 100 years specifically in regards to plastic products. How much has the production of plastics increased or decreased over time? What does pollution look like now as opposed to a century ago? Based on past policies, will these new ones actually be effective? How will the economy be affected by these changes? What role does the media play in spreading these movements? I hope to extensively examine these questions and learn more about how much of an impact the “Green Movement” has had and may continue to have in the future, not just on the environment but on other aspects of society as well.

 

Sources:

Global Efforts to End Plastic Pollution: Single-Use Plastics

https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-the-green-movement-1708810

https://www.allsides.com/dictionary/green-movement

Banning plastic straws — a look at how much it really helps, and who it could hurt