I agree knoxman......It is everyones responsibility!

yes - we must take care of our environment as best we can.
but it is still extremely important how things decay......

we need good mulch...

Why are plastic bags a problem?

Plastic bags have long been a waste problem that harms the environment:

* Every year 20 million Australians use around 5 billion plastic check-out bags.

* A person’s use of a plastic check-out bag can be counted in minutes – however long it takes to get from the shops to their homes. Plastic bags however, can take between 15 and 1000 years to break down in the environment.

* In the marine environment plastic bag litter is lethal, killing at least 100,000 birds, whales, seals and turtles every year. After an animal is killed by plastic bags its body decomposes and the plastic is released back into the environment where it can kill again.

* A Bryde's whale died on a Cairns beach after ingesting 6 square metres of plastic - including plastic bags. Such obstructions in animals can cause severe pain, distress and death.

* On land, plastic bag litter can block drains and trap birds. They also kill livestock. One farmer near Mudgee NSW, carried out an autopsy on a dead calf and found 8 plastic bags in its stomach. The loss of this calf cost the farmer around $500.

* Plastic bags are not free to consumers – they are actually adding an estimated $173 million a year to Australia’s grocery bills.

* At least 80 million plastic bags end up as litter on our beaches, streets and parks. Australian local and State Governments spend over $200 million a year picking up litter.

* Not all litter is deliberate. 47% of wind borne litter escaping from landfills is plastic – much of this is plastic bags.

* Over 200,000 plastic check-out bags are dumped in landfills every hour.

* Only 5% of Australia’s plastic bags are currently being recycled, despite recycling facilities being available at major supermarkets.

* In many council areas, plastic bags are the single main contaminant of kerbside recycling.

* Plastic bags are a by-product of the oil industry. Over 3 billion HDPE plastic bags are imported into Australia every year.

* Since March 2002, Ireland has reduced its plastic check-out bag usage by 90% and in April 2003 Coles Bay in Tasmania successfully banned plastic check-out bags in all their retail stores. In the first twelve months, Coles Bay stopped the use of 350,000 plastic check-out bags.

* Planet Ark has since worked with the communities of Huskisson, Kangaroo Valley, Mogo and Oyster Bay in NSW and Birregurra, Cannon’s Creek, Metung and Murtoa in Victoria to help them also become Plastic Bag Free Towns.

* Over 10 million reusable bags have now been sold by Coles, Woolworths and Safeway stores. At only $1 each, they're a cheap way to save Australia's wildlife!


http://www.planetark.com

Are Plastic Grocery Bags Sacking the Environment?


John Roach
for National Geographic News
September 2, 2003

The "paper or plastic" conundrum that vexed earnest shoppers throughout the 1980s and 90s is largely moot today. Most grocery store baggers don't bother to ask anymore. They drop the bananas in one plastic bag as they reach for another to hold the six-pack of soda. The pasta sauce and noodles will get one too, as will the dish soap.

Plastic bags are so cheap to produce, sturdy, plentiful, easy to carry and store that they have captured at least 80 percent of the grocery and convenience store market since they were introduced a quarter century ago, according to the Arlington, Virginia-based American Plastics Council.


As a result, the totes are everywhere. They sit balled up and stuffed into the one that hangs from the pantry door. They line bathroom trash bins. They carry clothes to the gym. They clutter landfills. They flap from trees. They float in the breeze. They clog roadside drains. They drift on the high seas. They fill sea turtle bellies.

"The numbers are absolutely staggering," said Vincent Cobb, an entrepreneur in Chicago, Illinois, who recently launched the Web site http://Reusablebags.com to educate the public about what he terms the "true costs" associated with the spread of "free" bags. He sells reusable bags as a viable solution.

According to Cobb's calculations extrapolated from data released by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 2001 on U.S. plastic bag, sack, and wrap consumption, somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year. Of those, millions end up in the litter stream outside of landfills—estimates range from less than one to three percent of the bags.

Laurie Kusek, a spokeswoman for the American Plastics Council, said the industry works with its U.S. retail customers to encourage recycling of plastic bags, which are in high demand from companies such as Trex in Winchester, Virginia, for use in building materials.

"We also feel it is important to understand that plastic grocery bags are some of the most reused items around the house," she said. "Many, many bags are reused as book and lunch bags as kids head off to school, as trash can liners, and to pickup Fido's droppings off the lawn."

But like candy wrappers, chewing gum, cigarette butts, and thousands of other pieces of junk, millions of the plastic bags end up as litter. Once in the environment, it takes months to hundreds of years for plastic bags to breakdown. As they decompose, tiny toxic bits seep into soils, lakes, rivers, and the oceans, said Cobb.


"The plastic bags are so inexpensive that in the stores no one treats them as worth anything … they use two, three, or four when one would do just as well," he said.

First introduced in the 1970s, plastic bags now account for four out of every five bags handed out at the grocery store. "When you look at it as a product, it is an unbelievable success story," said Cobb.


The success of the plastic bag has meant a dramatic increase in the amount of sacks found floating in the oceans where they choke, strangle, and starve wildlife and raft alien species around the world, according to David Barnes, a marine scientist with the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England, who studies the impact of marine debris.

Barnes said that plastic bags have gone "from being rare in the late 80s and early 90s to being almost everywhere from Spitsbergen 78° North [latitude] to Falklands 51° South [latitude], but I'll bet they'll be washing up in Antarctica within the decade."

Bateman said that plastic bags are becoming a victim of their success. "The industry is at the stage where its success has caused concerns and these concerns need to be addressed responsibly," he said. Among other initiatives, Bateman supports the development of biodegradable plastic bags, a technology that has made strides in recent years.

Plastax to the Rescue?

Plastic bag litter has become such an environmental nuisance and eyesore that Ireland, Taiwan, South Africa, Australia, and Bangladesh have heavily taxed the totes or banned their use outright. Several other regions, including England and some U.S. cities, are considering similar actions.

Tony Lowes, director of Friends of the Irish Environment in County Cork, said the 15 cent (about 20 cents U.S.) tax on plastic bags introduced there in March 2002 has resulted in a 95 percent reduction in their use. "It's been an extraordinary success," he said.

According to Lowes, just about everyone in Ireland carries around a reusable bag and the plastic bags that once blighted the verdant Irish countryside are now merely an occasional eyesore. Cobb believes a similar tax in the U.S. would have a similar effect on reducing consumption.

The American Plastics Council is wary of such a tax in the U.S. They say it would cost tens of thousands of jobs and result in an increase in energy consumption, pollution, landfill space, and grocery prices as store owners increase reliance on more expensive paper bags as an alternative.

Bateman said the Irish tax of about U.S. 20 cents per bag is too high, but that a tax of 3 to 5 cents could have a positive impact on reducing plastic bag consumption by changing people's behavior.

"Having bags charged has some merits because it gets them used more responsibly," he said. For example, instead of a bagger using six bags to package a person's dinner, the bagger might use just two.

As for Cobb, he hopes people will begin to realize that paper and plastic bags both come at great cost to the environment and instead of scratching their head when asked which type they prefer, they'll pull a tightly packed reusable bag from their pocket.

"We want to make it cool to carry reusable shopping bags," he said.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news

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This article is four years old...hmmm I wonder if plastic bags have washed up in Antarctica yet?

That's fantastic news about Ireland!

The grocery stores here in San Diego have recently been pushing re-usable tote bags with the stores advertising on it - I've seen many people buying them, but not many using them.

It depends on the location of the can and the amount of moisture. I assumed that the can would be in the ground with some moisture not sitting pristinely on a shelf. Once again the correct information is redily available if one wanted to do a bit of searching rather than relying on the infablbility of a chain email.

Masagetrader I care deeply about the environment too, I spent quite a few years doing environmental remediation and cleaning up Hazardous Material Spills, but when people use junk science to try to further the cause it comes back to bite them in loss of credibility. Some people feel that is acceptable to use scare tactics and out right BS to further the cause. Then when an actuall problem comes along they wonder why no one believes them. All I am saying is if you are going to post facts, get your poop in a group and make sure the facts are accurate before you post them.

Twilights twin, nobody peed in my cherios, and I nowhere in my post did I say throw anything away, I just challenged your facts and figure and aske if you can verify them obviously you cannot. I have forgotten more about environmental cleanup than you will ever know. You like a large part of the movement chant the slogans and drink the koolaid but you don't have a clue as to what is actually going on. You run around crying wolf so much that nobody bellieves you when the wolf bites you in the butt.

Many of those plastic bags here in the US are biodegradable.

That is all they have at the store I use. I went to pick one up out in the yard one day and it crumbled apart. It hadn't been there for a couple days, but it had rained!

Knox ole buddy,
When you pick up that can and throw it away, where does it go?

"To the county dump where it is buried right along with the asbestos that they removed from buildings years ago!!!"

They may even have a youth sports field built there next year!!

Fanta:

Using scare tactics and worse case hypothetical senarios damages the credibility of the entire environmental movement. You might think you are doing something to further the cause but all you are doing is giving the opposition the ammunition they need to dismiss your statements as baseless rants. The end does not justify the means. Nobody can argue with facts, but anyone can dismiss unjustifiable allegations.

There are very strict regulations on where and how you can dispose of asbestos and there have been for many years. That is not to say that the stuff that was disposed of before it became regulated can't come back to haunt us but what is disposed of now is very closely monitored.

One of the first superfund sites was the removal of a trailer park that was built on the tailings of an old asbestos mill and the remedeation of the site in Globe, Arizona. That was back in the early 1980s.

Yes, we have an old landfill here where they have signs that say< Asbestos burial site Do not disturb soil!

It was closed in the late 80's! They havent been able to do anything with the land since. I was reading in the paper. They are planning a youth sports complex on the site!

Fanta:

Asbestos is only harmful if you breathe in the fibers. The lodge in the lungs and cause damage similar to silicosis that you get from silicone dust or black lung that you get from coal dust. In addition they cause a distinctive form of cancer in some people. When they are buried in a landfill and capped with impermiable soil like they use to cap a landfill, they pose no danger because they cannot work their way to the surface.

On the other hand, I would not be a big fan of placing anything on top of a landfill because of the methane gas that is bound to be generated from the decomposing garbage. There was a housing development built on an old landfill between Seattle and Tacoma, WA years ago. The methane began to seep into the basements of the houses. They had to drill into the landfill and put in a flare stack to burn off the methane. I also wrote a Health and Safety Plan and did some training for an expirimental project in Pueblo, CO where they built a plant to take the methane from the landfill and turn it into diesel fuel, naptha and wax. The project was eventually abandoned and the plant dismanteled but that was before $3+ a gallon diesel.

Building anything on a landfill is a risky venture and there are worse things buried in them than asbestos. Industry is strictly regulated on how they can dispose of their wastes including hazardous wastes, there are no such restrictions on the American household. Anything the average American don't know what to do with, goes in the garbage regardless of how toxic it may be.