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By Kay Bushnell
(This is the first in a three-part series on plastic bags.)
As we walk in the Palo Alto Baylands my friend and I are startled to see crinkly blobs of plastic flattened against the shrubby vegetation. We watch as the wind blows hundreds of plastic bags from the landfill against and over the chain link fence into the nearby nature preserve, scattering them in unsightly abandon. We start picking them up. Many bags are hooked by the prickly plants and thistles that make collecting them a delicate, sometimes painful process. Others are floating in the nearby estuary.
We scramble to collect armfuls of the puffy, polluting intruders, stuffing them into each other until we have big balls of wadded-up plastic to take to the Recycling Center. Gathering plastic bags in the baylands becomes a regular activity for us on windy days. Some of the bags we collect come from spools positioned near fruits and vegetables in grocery stores. Others display the names of a wide variety of retail stores.
Worldwatch says that four to five trillion plastic bags were produced worldwide in 2002 alone and that Americans throw away 100 billion polyethylene plastic bags each year. Most are used just once and discarded.
It wasn't always so. According to Worldwatch, the first plastic baggies appeared in 1957. When a cheap manufacturing process for plastic bags was developed in the 1970s, production of these lightweight, water resistant, low cost consumer items exploded. Plastic bags are only part of the flood of plastic litter that inundates our planet. The world's oceans and landfills contain plastic debris of all kinds: bottle caps, discarded fishing nets, food containers, packaging material, disposable diapers, and anything else that is made of plastic.
Everything from newspapers to vegetables is encased in plastic. It is unusual to find a manufactured product today that isn't at least partially made of plastic. The problem is that plastic stays in the environment for hundreds of years. Some say forever, especially plastic that ends up in the marine environment. A few years ago the Algalita Research Foundation took samples from a wide swath of the Northern Pacific Ocean and found it to be a plastic soup containing 6 pounds of plastic trash for every pound of plankton.
Plastic bags are number one on the list of dangerous debris that was found in the 2002 International Coastal Clean-up. Each year plastic bags floating in the world's oceans kill millions of birds and an estimated 100,000 sea turtles and marine mammals who mistake them for food (jellyfish and squid) and die when they ingest them. On the island of Midway in the Pacific Ocean plastic particles that albatrosses naively pick up on the open seas and feed to their chicks cause internal obstruction, and the nestlings starve.
The bags are a threat to the survival of sea turtles in whose guts plastic bags of all description and balloons are commonly found. Dr J. Nichols, Director of the Blue Ocean Institute says, "We find turtles with plastic in their gut, plastic hanging out of their cloaca, plastic blocking digestion, and turtles tangled in plastic bags and line cutting through their flesh. It makes us angry and sad."
The stomach of a minke whale in April 2002 that washed up on the Normandy coast contained 800 kg of plastic bags. In February 2004 shredded black garbage bags and fishing twine were found in the stomach of a dead Cuviers Beaked whale. Plastic six-pack rings discarded from canned drinks entangle and kill fish, birds, and marine animals.
Here in the Bay Area sea birds who are found with their legs and necks entangled with carelessly discarded fishing line are brought to wildlife rehabilitation centers. Often the plastic filament cuts off their circulation; gangrene develops; and the otherwise health birds have to be euthanized.
Awareness about the harm done by plastic bags is growing as conservation societies and scientists document the damage.
Continued in next issue: What About Recycling Plastic Bags?
Resources:
- If you want to help reduce plastic pollution contact Ann Schneider at 650-962-0404 or schneiderann@juno.com. Ann is Chair of the Loma Prieta Chapter's new "Zero Waste Committee."
- Plasticbagrecycling.org lists locations where plastic bags can be dropped off in each zip code area.
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