Who’s Behind the ‘Save the Plastic Bag’ Campaign?
September 19, 2008 · Print This Article
The plastic bag industry is nervous, and they have good reason to be. More and more cities are banning plastic bags, or imposing taxes on people who want to use them. It’s all part of an effort to reduce the number of plastic bags that end up littering our streets, floating on the surface of oceans and lakes, clogging storm drains, killing birds and marine life and sitting in landfills all over the world.
Plastic bags are so ubiquitous – you get one nearly any time make a purchase, from your groceries and clothing to medicine and school supplies. In fact, the Algalita Marine Research Foundation estimates that shoppers worldwide use 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags per year. That’s a lot of resources – and trash. Trash that could easily be avoided by choosing reusable bags instead, which many people are now doing.
But the plastic bag industry doesn’t think we need to cut back on plastic. It’s their livelihood, and they’ve enlisted the help of lobbyist Stephen Jones to protect their interests. One of the ways the industry (including plastic giants Elkay Plastics Co. and Grand Packaging) is ‘fighting back’ is through their website, SavethePlasticBag.com. Save the Plastic Bag is an attempt to debunk ‘misinformation’ about plastic bags, and Stephen Jones is head of the campaign to bring their protests to the public.
Some of the points disputed on the Save the Plastic Bag website include the idea that plastic bags are made from oil, that paper bags are better for the environment, that landfills are full of plastic bags and that plastic bags aren’t recyclable. The site alleges that a ‘global campaign of misinformation’ is targeting their industry. You can read the site’s claims and the data they use to back them up for the details.
Believe it or not, it’s true that there’s a lot of misinformation about plastic bags out there. For example, paper bags aren’t necessarily a better choice. Trees are cut down to create them in many cases, and they release methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as they decompose. It’s also true that there are recycling facilities for plastic bags, though Salon notes that plastic bags are usually downcycled into other products that can’t be recycled – plus, less than 1% of all plastic bags end up being recycled.
Do any of the campaign’s points make plastic bags good for the environment? The answer is a resounding NO. First of all, since plastic bags don’t decompose and very few of them end up recycled, they all have to end up somewhere. That means they either take up space in landfills (which, despite the plastic campaign’s insistence that 0.4% of the total trash in landfills is a small amount, is actually millions and millions of bags) or litter the earth. Why should we just continue adding to trash dumps when there are alternatives out there? And, regardless of the pro-plastic campaign’s insistence that the numbers are wrong when it comes to the animals killed by plastic bags, animals are still being killed needlessly.
The simple truth is, plastic bags aren’t good for the earth. Reusable is always better. Taxing people who choose to use plastic bags may not be the answer, and the fight against plastic bags is only a small facet of the efforts we need to make to clean up the only planet we have to live on. But it’s still important, and reducing the number of plastic bags we use is absolutely worth doing.
To their credit, the ‘Save the Plastic Bag’ campaign advocates reusing plastic bags as many times as possible, recycling them when you’re done and even using reusable bags. Consumers definitely need to take responsibility for their own actions and return plastic shopping bags to the store (most stores have recycling bins out front). Plastic bags aren’t likely to completely go away any time soon, so if you’ve got to use them, use them again, and again, and again – and then recycle them. But you should also carry reusable bags with you on every single shopping excursion, because less trash on the earth is always a good thing.
Link [Save the Plastic Bag] + [Algalita]
Photo credit: PlasticBagFree.com + GreenerImpact
- Ban Plastic Bags in Edmonton
- Ocean Taskforce: Toxic Plastics Killing Marine Life
- Tampa Bay Biodegradable Bag Act
Related Posts:
The Bay vs. The BagDec. 18th: Day Without a (Disposable) Bag
The Secret Culprit of Oil Consumption: Plastic Bags & Bottles
Make a Messenger Bag Out of Trash Bags!
One-Third of Sea Turtles Have Plastic in their Digestive Systems
That is sad that they are launching such a campaign to continue polluting the earth… they know they are polluting the earth… but they simply want to save their bottom line. I don’t know why they don’t start to adapt in order to begin to meet the demand for reusable bags? Why don’t they increase recycling centers and awareness? There’s tons of things they could poor money into the both help the environment and their product, but they choose to take a ridiculous route instead.
As much as I can understand that ‘they’ would be losing business, the plastic bag issue has been going on for years. The plastic bag people should have been preparing for this, and looking at ways to re-engineer their companies and products. I knew this 2 years ago, before I even started reading ‘Green Blogs’ how could they not know?
And as for the people who ‘have ‘ to line their trash cans and pick up dog matter, there is plenty of other packaging that will work. I use cereal boxes, and the wrapping it comes for trash liners (kitchen). There is plenty of plastic bags around, you just have to re-think on where to get it.
I can’t find any information… just disinformation. I’ve read everything at algalita, and about a hundred web searches and I’ve yet to find any sourced facts. Depending on the website here are the numbers of animals harmed by bags per year are:
1000’s of marine life
100 Thousand marine mammals
100 Million marine animals
1 Billion marine mammals and birds
100 Trillion marine mammals and birds
I’m guessing someone threw out a number and it was continuously embelished. There doesn’t semm to be any original source. i don’t think there are 100 trillion marine birds and mammals in existence that could even die every year.
Articles have speculated that plastic soup is killing all of the whales and plankton, etc, but whale populations are booming and so are plankton populations. Algalita has published lots about the toxins abosrbed into the plastic, but none suggesting that these toxins are transmitted into the animals, just speculating that they could be. In fact, it seemed from Algalita’s website that the big killer was discarded fishing gear, and that the largest source of plastics came from bad shipping containers used to transport the pellets made into plastic.
Plastic is in everything we use from the console of our Prius to our clothes to our toothbrush. Plastic is not going away, and disposable plastic may not even be the primary problem. For all the research I’ve seen, plastic may be the very best thing for the environment because of its inertness. Things made of wood or cloth may be far more toxic breaking down if used on a large scale.
I’m not advocating littering into the oceans, but isn’t it true that littering, and bad shipping practices are the real culprits of plastic soup.
At some level we need real information, not just dubious claims that 10% of all plastic bags wind up in the ocean. Otherwise we will all carry around our cloth shopping bags smug and satisfied that we’ve done our part without helping a single creature.
i have save more that u could think last week i have save over
200 hundred bag can you think how much for are iverment that is
i might go up to new york to see how is it bad or god i am not sure
it might be bad it might be good you never now how is it last week
it went to nevada and it was nice
This is one of the fairest and most informative posts on plastic bags that we have read. We must all work together for the betterment of the Earth! REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE, RESTORE. There is so much misinformation on both sides, but i agree, there is no need to continue using something that i have witnessed again and again flying from the unclosed top of garbage trucks driving past Upper Newport Bay in Orange County. For those that do not believe that plastic bags make up a significant portion of litter in our natural areas, then volunteer. Volunteer on a project that has nothing to do with collecting or counting plastic bags, and you will see them everywhere. I volunteer with the Clapper Rail Study Project in UNB, the highest proportion of litter in the Bay is styrofoam by far, but right behind that is plastic bags. At a restoration event yesterday in Mason Regional Park in Irvine, there were plastic bags caught in the chain link fencing along Culver, and at least ten under the Eucalyptus trees along the road. They are everywhere. Last year during our Coastal Cleanup day at Mason, the majority of the trash was plastic bags and styrofoam, usually combined, i.e. styrofoam to-go containers in a plastic bag.