Our Environment and Plastic Bags

A plastic bag or plastic pouch is used for packaging purpose for many different purposes. Nowadays the use of plastic bags is increasing day by day. This is due to them being less costly, easy to carry, light in weight and able to hold liquid, solid and gels. Plastic can even be used to create closed system which helps in keeping food fresh for long periods of time. 

Plastic bags are reusable and can be used again and again, which also keeps them being a non biodegradable substance. Plastic is globally consumed on a very large scale but after some year’s people are starting to notice some big issues associated with plastic bags. These issues are as follows…

Garbage: Plastic bags are cheap and so easy to use-n-throw which results in a large percentage of garbage belonging to our plastic. Plastic is an artificial product which is not easy to get degradable,  thus it also makes a cover over degradable things which affect the normal cycle. 

Animal Life:  Animals are either vegetarian or non vegetarian, but not a single type of animal has ability to digest plastic. As plastic is a product which is  developed chemically.  After reaching the stomach plastic will stay there as it is not digestible, and with time it will affect the digestion and then may lead to death. Birds and street animals do try to eat garbage and a unintentionally intake plastic will most likely result in death.

Environment: Global warming, plastic is one of the major causes of global warming this can be explained with the diagram seen above. From the diagram we can predict how dangerous plastic bags can be.

So what’s the solution you might ask? Ban plastic bags completely is a difficult task because we are using it widely in below fields.

Medical: Most of the medical equipments come in plastic bags to protect them from various rays and bacteria. So we are using plastic bags packaging for medical purposes for a long period of time.

Food: In the food industry plastic bags helps in the transportation of milk products, vegetables, package food, and many more things for retail purposes. Bulk transport plastic is commonly used also. 

Construction: Earlier to transport construction materials like plastic was not used which cause losses. As in extreme whether plastic can protect raw materials from damage and can also allow easy movement and store facility

Packaging: For transportation and packaging purposes plastic bags can be used. This helps in damage free and the transportation of products, this also works in export and import of products as plastic is highly durable.

As it’s not possible to stop using plastic bags in above fields and there are so many other fields where plastic is used widely. An alternate solution can be good quality plastic or recyclable plastic or organic shopping bags of good material which we can use over and over again, these can also be seen as an accessory! If you use standard plastic which can be recycling further you can save earth and try to reduce global warming. Many countries have already banned cheap quality plastic and switched to environment friendly plastic bags which we will all benefit from. So come on, do your bit and think next time you are chucking away your plastic bag.