Shopping Waste

by Aylin E.

Did you ever think about how much waste all those plastic bags you use produce? Plastic bags are one of the big reasons that shopping could be horrible for the environment. Now that it's the holiday season, people are buying more than ever: lots of gifts, food for parties, and more things that you might need in the holiday season. Go back to your previous holidays and think about every gift you bought, and all the cans and bags and wrappers and boxes all from those big meals you eat during the holidays. They all help produce more waste. 

Online shopping is one of the big reasons that shopping is bad for the environment. Remember COVID19 and all those bags that your groceries were in? All those gifts you get online come in something, and sometimes it might be in a plastic bag, and other times the gift might be surrounded in inflatable package fillers. A website that agrees called ScienceDirect tells us what online shopping can do to the environment. It says, “A surge in packaging waste from online shopping is raising environmental concerns.” This quote shows us how bad online shopping is for the environment and it should get more attention. 

But because the holidays are coming up, people are buying lots recently. The United Nations Environment Programme tells us how you can’t easily undo the plastic you waste. This website tells us that, “But there is one impulse—using unnecessary plastic—we should all resist because if we don’t, we could be condemning the planet to a long-lasting, toxic headache.” This website means to tell us that plastic waste can also harm us. This website also tells us, “it is estimated that in Britain alone around 177 million straws and 122 million plastic cups will be used this Christmas with around 200 million sheets of wrapping paper dumped after the festivities.” This helps us see that a couple days of plastic waste do more than you think. 

Grocery shopping happens year round and it is another big reason for plastic waste. You may have already seen people in grocery stores bringing reusable bags to put all their groceries in, or just to put fruits and veggies, which is a great start. But shopping for food includes lots of plastic, which is the thing we need to change. FoodPrint has many reasons why grocery shopping is bad for the environment. Did you notice that, “Plastic is ubiquitous in supermarkets. Produce packaged in clamshell containers; water bottles and jugs, peanut butter canisters, salad dressings in plastic bottles and jars; and pasta boxes with miniature plastic windows line almost every shelf?” This helps us see that almost everything in supermarkets contains plastic packaging. FoodPrint also makes it very clear to us that, “Those small pieces of plastic in your shopping cart add up to mountains of plastic waste.” This shows us how much plastic there is, lots because of shopping. They also tell us that, “The United States generates 42 million metric tons of plastic waste each year and most ends up in oceans or landfills where it takes up to 500 years to break down.” This helps us see how much plastic waste there is, which is a lot.