The Battle of the Bag: Should the plastic bag be banned?

  After watching the “Battle of the Bag” documentary I found myself shocked as to how much it negatively affects our world today. As an American consumer I go grocery shopping with my family each week and even though we do have environmentally friendly bags, we often still use plastic as well. I had no idea how much of a negative impact on our environment I was making, each time I chose plastic.

   Shown above is a consumer alert promoting awareness for the area of California specifically. (In reality it holds the whole world accountable.) It is a "mockumentary" of the famous t.v. show, Planet Earth, instead it shows the life of a plastic bag, and it's journey to it's Great Pacific Garbage Patch (show below). It was a great video, definitely a must watch.

   Before watching the documentary, I was aware that plastic bags were by no means helpful to our world, but I still had no idea how hurtful they have been. Not only has the plastic bag indirectly hurt people, but it has also hurt innocent creatures among us. The emotion I felt during the scene when they pulled 50 kilos of plastic out of a cow’s stomach was overwhelming. I am a huge animal lover and this was almost unbelievable to me. Especially in India, a place where cows are sacred. After they have a meal or two of plastic, their digestive system can become blocked which slowly starves them to death. I learned a lot from this video and I am actually quite interested in where the process of “banning the bag” is now in America. I learned that a few countries have made it illegal to have certain types of plastic bags in possession, like Delhi, India. I hope that we can make a positive change for our country too, and soon.

 I have never actually thought about what plastic was made of before. When the Consumer Psychologist asked people on the street, “What is plastic made of?” I was just as clueless as the rest of them. I was very intrigued to think that it is made with oil. I also never thought about the life span of a plastic bag before. I was intimidated at the fact it can “live” 100-400 years. Much like the lifespan of a turtle, before it unfortunately mistakes a plastic bag for food.

  Many of the people I learned about in the video were trying to solve the plastic bag problem by first taking action in their communities. These people were passionate about saving our planet and its inhabitants. They were solving the problem by attempting to eliminate the plastic bag completely out of their communities by talking to local shop owners and businesses about how plastic bags affect our planet. All of these business owners agreed to go biodegradable. An interesting way plastic bag use was managed in another county was that the prices of plastic bags were raised an extra 30 cents per bag at a grocery store. They stated that the use of the bags dropped by 90%. Lastly, the last strategy used in this video to reduce use of the plastic bag was a fabric bag for groceries/shopping.

    I think we should deal with plastic waste in a very particular way. I think in order to have effective recycling, we should have a specific place where it can all be recycled together. Process. Procedure. Location. I believe this is a problem that we should solve locally and globally. First with a small step, locally and soon I believe the whole world will follow. I think that is it very important to make a specific place for all plastic including plastic bags to be recycled together because then we will be able to productively reuse the plastic that we produce everyday.

           As the manufacturer suggested, I think plastic bags are “misunderstood” to a certain point. I only believe that they are misunderstood because the purpose of them clearly was not to affect the world in a negative way. Unfortunately, I believe the plastic bag has more cons than pros. In conclusion, I think that recycling is a very important responsibility that each person on earth has to hold. We also need to continue to be more aware of where we leave our trash so that it doesn’t end up in an animal’s stomach. Most importantly, we need to eliminate the plastic bag, and go green.

Pictured above are cows in India eating plastic, eventually it clogs their digestive systems, causing them to starve, like mentioned in the documentary.

Above I found an interesting video on our impact on our environment (birds), it may not directly relate to the topic, but in general it is very important not to litter, animals will pick up and eat almost anything they see, mistaking it for food, like the turtle in the documentary that died after eating plastic.

Thanks for reading! 

Ellen