The Curse of Single-Use Plastic Bags
Many of us remember the hit Disney movie, Wall-E. The opening scene presents a lifeless cityscape. A closeup reveals that many of the apparent skyscrapers are actually towering piles of garbage. A rusty, garbage collecting robot, Wall-E, displays the only movement in this desolate scene. He rolls about on his metal treads collecting and compressing endless pieces of garbage, adding them to the neatly stacked piles. The virtual absence of human or animal life indicates the level of toxicity in the planet’s air and water. The last remnant of humanity is circling the earth in spaceships, waiting for a sign that the home planet can again sustain life. When the movie was released in 2008, it bore a cautionary message, but the prospect that catastrophic damage could actually be inflicted on the planet through limitless volumes of garbage along with polluted air and water seemed at the time to be comfortably remote.
No one following this decade’s environmental headlines can view the Wall-E scenario with any degree of comfort. Accounts abound of overflowing landfills leaching toxic chemicals into local soil and water supplies. The global-average temperature record streak continues with the past 12 months (May 2023 – April 2024) being the highest on record. The nine months starting June 2023 saw the highest earth-wide temperatures in recorded history. Reports of accelerating losses of wildlife species and of frequent toxic chemical releases have become commonplace. Single-use plastics constitute one of the looming threats to the continued livability of the planet.
Virtually all of the plastic in use today is derived from oil or gas, to which has been added a variety of chemicals, depending on whether the goal is to produce an artificial heart, a blender, or a million plastic bags. While plastic is needed to produce many items essential to our civilization, the majority of the plastic items produced could easily be dispensed with.[1] At the top of that list are single-use plastic bags.
These ubiquitous bags cause serious environmental damage. The first step is extracting fossil fuels from the earth, a process that produces a great deal of earth-warming carbon dioxide. Manufacturing the bags also emits large amounts of carbon. Transporting them burns more fossil fuels, and we haven’t even arrived at the point where these bags are actually distributed to customers.
An average single-use plastic bag is used by a shopper for about 13 minutes, at which point it is discarded or, perhaps five percent of the time, placed in a recycle bin. These discarded bags and other plastic packaging make up the largest percentage of the loose litter clogging our gutters. Most of the bags end up in landfills, which many have assumed provide a safe repository. But plastics do not decompose like organic materials. They simply degenerate into tiny microplastic pellets. Plastics comprise 60-80% of man-made trash in oceans world-wide, and 90% of all oceanic floating particles.[2] In spite of their plastic liners, all landfills eventually leech into the surrounding soil and waters, and eventually make their way to the sea.
Producers of plastics contend that to solve this problem, we simply need to increase the percentage of plastic bags that are recycled, achieving the goal of a “circular economy.” But recycling is not the answer. First of all, to be recycled bags must be completely clean, with no traces of food, dirt, or other contaminants. Secondly, all plastics degenerate each time they are recycled.[3] This means that few plastics can actually be recycled more than twice and even then, virgin plastics as well as other often toxic chemicals need to be added to produce new products. Most often, plastic bags inhibit recycling efforts. Rocky Mountain Recycling, a major Salt Lake County firm, reports that they must stop their machines several times a day to remove plastic bags that have “gummed up” the gears.[4]
Another big problem with plastics, including single-use bags, is that many of the chemicals used to produce them are toxic, and they leech out of these products at a steady rate. These dangerous chemicals poison the air and water throughout the planet. The leeched chemicals also attract other chemicals which can produce a very harmful chemical cocktail. Last year’s toxic fireballs in the East Palestine, OH train derailment included vinyl chloride, a toxic flammable gas and one of the chief ingredients used to produce plastic products.
Hundreds of municipalities and other political units have demonstrated that banning these bags significantly reduces their adverse effects. Washington DC was one of the first cities to implement a plastic bag ban in 2009. Since that time, the city has experienced an 85% reduction in plastic bag consumption. In 2012, Seattle banned retail stores and supermarkets from handing out single-use plastic bags. The first four years of implementation saw a 78% reduction in the city’s plastic bag use. Seattle’s ban also led to a 50 percent decline in the number of plastic bags ending up in the waste stream.
Many steps are needed to reduce the growing flood of non-essential plastic products that cause such great harm to the environment and public health. It is true that every form of container- -cloth, straw, paper, etc.– has environmental costs. But only single-use plastics threaten thousands of sea and land creatures, infest the air with dangerous microplastic pellets, and leach toxic chemicals out of landfills. Many of us have worked hard to replace plastic bags and packaging with greener substitutes. Local store chains, including Kroger (Smiths) and Walmart, have programs to credit the use of reusable bags, and to gradually eliminate single-use bags from their outlets. Plastics producers have long sought to blame their customers, or the third world countries without the means to responsibly recycle first-world plastic waste, for the increasing damage their products inflict. Heroic individual efforts are essential, but legal measures are required to have a significant social impact.
A ban on single-use plastic bags, accompanied by a small charge for forest-depleting paper bags, are “low hanging fruit” that take a meaningful first step in dealing with the plastics blight. Park City and Moab provide local models of effective bans. Contact your mayor and local council representatives to insist that your city and county join the many caring communities across the country that have outlawed this destructive product.
[1] Alice Mah, Plastic Unlimited: How Corporations are Fueling the Ecological Crisis and What We Can Do About It, (Polity, 2022) pp. 23, 25. [2] Liesl Clark and Rebecca Rockefeller, The Buy Nothing, Get Everything Plan, (Atria Paperback, 2020), p.14.[3] Ibid., Plastic Unlimited, p. 129.[4] Annie & Nelson Ayre, “Plastic Bag Initiative”, (Information sheet), June 2, 2019. Reconfirmed in interview at Rocky Mountain Plastics Main Office, Sept. 14, 2023.