Plastic and oil dependency
It is not only gasoline for your car that makes us highly dependent on foreign oil, it’s all those plastic bags!
Here is some information from the Miami Herald:
1. Plastic bags are a petroleum product and a waste of a non-renewable resource. Americans use 100 billion bags a year, requiring 12 million barrels of oil.
2. They don’t biodegrade. They photodegrade, becoming bits of plastic dust, a contaminant, and even that takes many, many decades.
3. They are rarely recycled (only about 1 percent) and become litter pollution. They sully streams and clog roadside drains. Plastic bags are a top debris item encountered during coastal cleanups.
4. They endanger wildlife, particularly sea life. Animals become entangled in them, get suffocated by them or ingest them. Every square kilometer in the ocean contains an estimated 18,000 pieces of plastic.
Those are very good reasons to reuse your plastic bags and better yet bring your bags to the store. Instead of sandwich baggies use reusable sandwich wraps.
