Do We Need to Use (and Discard) So Many Plastic Bags Each Year?

Meg Scharf UCF Forum columnist Much of the time I hate plastic bags. Although they can be useful, they also can be a messy nuisance and an ecological nightmare. Plastic bags can keep things dry if you walk through the rain and they do a nice job of carrying groceries home from the store or toting garbage and lawn clippings to the curb. If not recycled, however, they can become a big mess. After a single use, many end up in a landfill or on the side of the road, blown by the wind into some weeds. They look awful. Sometimes plastic bags are discarded in a park or public place or on a beach, a blight on our view of nature. Back in the day before plastic bags were common, when grocery stores packed large brown paper bags with food, I do not ever recall seeing discarded brown paper bags at the side of the road. I am not sure why. I also dislike the sheer wastefulness of using as many plastic bags as we do. For the most part, it seems that they are used once. Sometimes many plastic bags can be used on the same order. Apples are segregated in a bag of their own from bananas or pears. Heavier items might be double-bagged. It's true: Plastic bags can help when items are cold or moist, such as deli items or meat or freezer items, helping to preserve the food for the trip home, or to contain messes. So there is utility to their use in grocery stores. But why do we use 100 billion plastic shopping bags each year, according to Greenpeace's calculations? An estimated 50 million of ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news