Guy Goes Green

Wannabe green guy going green

Posts Tagged ‘landfills’

My week without plastic bags- a review

December 7th, 2009

The bag was just there

This week’s green challenge was to avoid using plastic bags and it has been a difficult one for me. For those just joining us, I have a new green task to complete over the course of a year. My green wife chooses what they are and my un-green self must research and act. I have had some successes and also some failures this week, but am glad that Ashley gave me this task and will continue to work on training my brain to say no to plastic bags. Although this task has been somewhat challenging for me, I have certainly learned quite a bit and think I am in the process of making a change along the way.

I learned that the world consumes an unbelievable number of plastic bags (500,000,000,000), a good amount of natural resources are needed to create these plastic bags, only a very small percentage of plastic bags are recycled and finally that plastic bags kill animals. Overall, the production of the bags and waste produced is harmful to our environment and to the planet. That being said, I need to minimize my use of these bags.

Even though I know that these things are bad for the environment, I learned that it was difficult for me to minimize my use. It was not difficult to choose whether to take a plastic bag or not, but it was difficult to remember to say no. Too often this week, I walked out of a store and realized, after the fact, that I had a bag. As a consumer, I have been trained to go through the shopping process and take a bag without thinking about it. I recognized this problem early on and have taken steps to retrain my brain.

First, I wrote “No Plastic” on my hand in ink. OK, this might be a bit silly and a little dramatic, but I was slightly upset with myself for not being able to kick the plastic habit. This made me look at “No Plastic” before I grab a bag. I also placed one of our canvas bags in my car so that I can bring this into the store if I have to shop. These steps, along with my wife’s help, have led to a few successful scenarios where I did not take a bag.

It has certainly been an interesting week and will continue to work on un-training my brain. Even though I may not have completed the task to a Tee, I have recognized that a big part of being green is daily habits. These habits and daily decisions can have a big impact on the long term environment. Let me know any of your plastic bag tips in the area below and stay tuned for this week’s task coming up shortly!

4 comments »

Posted in earth, Week 7 Plastic Bags

Tags: landfills plastic bags recycle reuse waste

Plastic bags screw up our environment!

December 1st, 2009

It seems that a good way to motivate myself for my weekly challenges is to research why I should be concerned with the topic at hand. This week’s challenge is to eliminate plastic bag usage and I thought it would be good to take a look at some statistics surrounding plastic bags. What I found will make me think twice before I take another plastic bag.

Worldwide, we consume about 500,000,000,000 plastic bags per year
Of the 100 Billion polyethylene plastic bags thrown away by Americans, only .6 percent are recycled.
Approximately 60 – 100 million barrels of oil are required to make the world’s plastic bags each year.
Plastic entanglement is responsible for 100,000 marine animal deaths every year.
Sea Turtles apparently mistake plastic bags for food, ingest them and die.
The cost of plastic bags to US retailers is $4 Billion per year. Guess who this gets passed on to?
Most plastic bags take over 400 years to biodegrade, while some figures indicate it could take up to 1000 years for bags to break down.
If the US throws away 99 Billion (non recycling) bags every year and it takes up to 150,000 bags to create a ton of waste… the United States throws away 660,000 TONS of just bags every year.
If there are about 300 million people in the US and as a whole we throw away 99 billion bags per year, that means that every man, woman and child is responsible for throwing away 330 bags every year. If each bag is 5g (just an estimate), that equates to about 3.5 pounds per person. Over a lifetime, we use over 250 pounds of plastic bags that will not break down for several hundred years.

To me, this seems like a no brainer for making decisions in my daily life. I often have a choice as to whether I need a bag and most often I do not. If I am at a store where I know I am going, I can choose to bring my own bags. Obviously, paper is not a good choice either, but BYOB (Bring Your Own Bag) is the way to go. I am learning that the small daily decisions I make every day can have a huge impact on the environment. Often, it is just as easy to NOT take a plastic bag as it is to take one. It almost goes beyond mere convenience and borders on gluttony to take a plastic bag.

I hope these statistics I found are interesting to you and please let me know any of your plastic bag stories in the comments area below.