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Anti-Plastic CampaignCampaign Background InfoPlastic bags are everywhere! Everyday, we are handed countlessplastic bags: when we go to the grocery store, retail clothing store,book store, restaurants, etc. Yes, sometimes, plastic bags areconvenient, as they are water resistant and light and inexpensivecompared to paper bags. Most of the time, plastic bags aresuperfluous and avoidable. It seems as though store clerks are ofteneager to hand out plastic bags for any and all kind of purchases.Sometimes, a plastic bag is just not necessary for that apple you areabout to eat or that soda you are going to drink right away. Here aresome questions we should ask ourselves whenever we are handed aplastic bag: Do I need to take as many plastic bags in supermarkets? Do I need a plastic bag for an item purchased that is alreadywell packaged by the manufacturer? Could I bring my own shopping bag when making purchases?Plastic bags are the cause of major environmental concerns. Statisticsshow that we are consuming more and more plastics every year. It isestimated that an average individual uses around 130 plastic bags peryear.Most of them go straight to our landfill and a very small percentage of plastic bags are actually recycled. A reduction in our use of plasticbags is essential in solving the environmental problems stemmingfrom them.Here are the reasons why you should limit your consumption of plastic bags:

1. Plastic bags and packaging account for a major part of our wastein landfills. More importantly, plastic bags are one of the topitems of litter on our community beaches, roads, sidewalks, andvegetation along with cigarette butts and Styrofoam.plastic bags are light and hard to contain. Because of their light weight,plastic bags fly easily in wind, float along readily in the currentsof rivers and oceans, get tangled up in trees, fences, poles, andso forth, and block the drainage.

2. Plastic bags are made from a non-renewable natural resource:petroleum. Consequently, the manufacturing of plastic bagscontributes to the diminishing availability of our naturalresources and the damage to the environment from theextraction of petroleum. At the same time, plastics arehazardous to produce; the pollution from plastic production isharmful to the environment. Finally, most plastic bags are madeof polyethylene - more commonly known as polythene - they arehazardous to manufacture and are said to take up to 1,000 yearsto decompose on land and 450 years in water. The fact thatplastics are not biodegradable means that the plastic bags incirculation and future production of plastic bags will stay withus for a long time: in our landfills, oceans, streets, and so forth.

3. Countless plastic bags end up in our ocean and cause harm toour marine wildlife. Many marine animals and birds mistakenlyingest plastic or become entangled and choke in plastic bags thatis floating around. For instance, environmentalists have pointedout that turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellyfish andinvariably swallow them. It is estimated 100,000 marinemammals die each year because of plastic litter in our ocean inthe North Pacific. Land animals seem to be victims as well. Incountries such as India, cows are mistakenly ingesting plasticbags on the streets as they are scavenging for food and end upchoking or starving to death, as the plastic cannot be digested.

4. There is virtually no market for recycling plastic bags. Very fewrecycling centers accept plastic bags because they are of littlerecyclable value. Although your local supermarkets collect usedplastic bags for recycle, very few are actually recycled
.5. On the other hand, most paper bags are made from recycledpaper. There is a profitable market in paper recycling and thepaper bags can be used and recycled.