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Are Plastic Bags Harming the Environment?

“Paper or plastic?” Nearly every time someone buys groceries, he or she is asked this question. The answer is not as easy as it may seem. According to environmentalists, plastic bags and paper bags both have drawbacks.

Plastic bags are everywhere. According to the Virginia-based American Plastics Council, 80 percent of groceries are packed in plastic bags.

“The numbers are absolutely staggering,” said Vincent Cobb, a businessperson from Chicago who launched reusablebags.com. He notes that consumers use between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags per year worldwide.

Plastic bags can be found in landfills, stuck on trees, and floating in the ocean.

What is the effect of all of these bags? Some experts say that they harm the environment. Plastic bags can take hundreds of years to break down. As they break down, they release poisonous materials into the water and soil.

Plastic bags in the ocean can choke and strangle wildlife. Endangered sea turtles eat the bags and often choke on them—probably because the bags look like jellyfish, the main food of many sea turtles.

In fact, floating plastic bags have been spotted as far north as the Arctic Ocean to as far south as the southern end of South America . One expert predicts that within ten years, plastic bags will wash up in Antarctica !

Despite these negative effects, plastic bags do have some advantages.

“Plastic grocery bags are some of the most reused items around the house,” explained Laurie Kusek of the American Plastics Council.

Plastic bags hold school lunches, line trash cans, and serve as gym bags. These uses decrease plastic bag waste.

According to the Film and Bag Federation, a trade group within the Society of Plastics Industry, paper bags use more energy and create more waste than plastic bags.

Plastic bags require 40 percent less energy to produce than paper bags and cause 70 percent less air pollution, the group explained. Plus, plastic bags release as much as 94 percent less waste into the water.

Paper bags do, however, break down more quickly than plastic bags. They also don’t strangle wildlife.

What, then, should people do?

While some experts have argued for placing a tax on plastic bags, others worry that the tax would cause people who make plastic bags to lose jobs. Some people also worry that making plastic bags more expensive (through taxes) would increase landfill waste because stores would start using paper bags again.

Another possible solution would be to use biodegradable plastic bags, a technology that has recently improved. “Biodegradable” means that the bags naturally break down, like, for example, a banana peel does when you leave it outside.

Perhaps the simplest solution for now, however, is to pack groceries in reusable bags, such as cloth tote bags.