STATE AND LOCAL NEWS
Plastic Bag Bans In Connecticut
By Paul Friedmann and Jazmin Daley
For many years people have attempted to ban plastic bags from use in grocery stores, but now it is finally happening in 2019. Throughout many towns and cities in Connecticut, the ban is outlawing the use of plastic bags in grocery stores. The ban is taking place in Hamden, Mansfield, Norwalk, Greenwich, and Westport.
The main motivation for the plastic bag ban is to decrease the harmful impact that they have on the environment. Plastic bags are non biodegradable, and they are just thrown into landfills or the ocean, as there is no good way to destroy them that doesn’t also harm the environment. The only possibility is reusing the plastic material in some way, but this is rarely done and not a viable option for the number of bags thrown out. They’re also photo-degradable meaning they break down into smaller and smaller toxic bits. A plastic bag can take between 400 and 1,000 years to break down into the environment. They also commonly kill animals and fish by asphyxia when it becomes wrapped around the creature. Plastic bags cause over 100,00 sea turtle and other marine animal deaths every year. In 2008, a sperm whale was found beached in California. It died due to the more than 22 kilos of plastic found in its stomach. By 2050 the oceans will have more plastic bags than fish if the trend continues.
This direct pollution issue is not the only problem with single use plastic bags. Creating these bags requires the use of oil. This poses multiple problems. Each year, twelve-million barrels of oil are used to produce plastic bags. Oil is a fossil fuel, and therefore the earth only has a finite amount of it. Mining for oil is also a very environmentally disruptive activity, as the fracking technique is often used. Hydraulic fracturing is a well stimulation technique in which rock is fractured by a pressurized liquid. The process involves a high-pressure injection of fracking fluid into the ground to create cracks in the deep-rock formations where natural gas, petroleum, and brine will flow more freely. The major negative effects of fracking are water pollution, air pollution, increased number of oil spills, harm to nearby plant and animal life, and earthquakes.
An obscene amount of plastic bags are discarded on a regular basis, making the problem all the more harmful and difficult to solve. An average family will use an average of fifteen plastic bags just on one trip to the supermarket. An average family also uses
about 1,500 plastic bags each year, but only returns one percent of these for recycling. This shows that even the systems in place for reducing the impact of the bags are not being utilized very much at all and are not doing what they need to. Five trillion plastic bags are produced yearly. If the bags were placed side by side, they'd be able to encircle the world seven times. Plastic bags are used for an average of 12 minutes, meaning this massive environmental problem exists for a short, small shopping convenience. They are used for just twelve minutes and then discarded to harm the environment and kill animals. Some ways to reduce plastic in the environment is by using bags made of reusable materials such as canvas, buying reusable produce bags, recycling plastic bags at your local grocery store, and buy in bulk at co-ops or food places. Many towns and cities in Connecticut will now force people to make use of these methods, because a town/city-wide plastic bag ban will make these the only viable options for grocery shopping. This will reduce the number of plastic bags used in the area definitely, although for a real difference to be made, the whole state, country, and even world will have to have a similar ban in place.
People are mostly happy about the ban as most individuals realize the correlation between the use of plastic bags and the degradation of our planet’s environment, and what that means for every living thing on Planet Earth. The reason for the ban to occur at all is the increased
traction and momentum that environmental activists have been gaining as well as a general attitude change from average people. This has forced the officials that can really make a change to create this new policy. While most people are happy about the plastic bag ban, there are some mixed opinions from people who would rather not have the plastic bag ban take place. One of these opinions is that some people think that banning the bags is pointless, that there will still be pollution into the environment and there is no stopping it. Others don’t care enough about the negative environmental impact of plastic bags to want to make the switch. They find the act of using reusable bags far too much of a hassle when compared to just using free plastic bags supplied at the point of purchase.