Say no to plastic bags this holiday season

It may not seem as though you are contributing to the waste stream for using a plastic bag each time you shop for groceries, but you are. Sometimes, grocers go bag crazy and end up giving you a bag per item. You can control this.

Reduce the amount of trash you generate, but simply saying “no thanks” for plastic bags. Why? Here are some reasons:

According to US EPA, the average family uses 1,000 plastic bags each year. In the CNMI, there are approximately 14,807 households* using 1,000 bags in a year, which means that 14.8 million plastic bags end up in our landfill.

The bags that do not end up at the landfill are found on the beach, roadsides or worse, in the ocean.

Plastic bags do not decompose. It takes approximately 400 to 1,000 years for the sun to break down the plastic into smaller and smaller pieces. These pieces can be mistaken for food by wild life. In the water the bags look like jellyfish and are eaten, causing choking and sometimes entanglement. Millions of animals are killed each year by plastic bags. When an animal eats the plastic, it cannot digest it, so the toxins in the plastic remain, which humans can then ingest when they eat the animal.

The United States and other countries are moving toward a ban or tax on plastic bags. San Francisco was the first city to ban plastic shopping bags in 2007, followed by Los Angeles. Since then, hundreds of cities have also implemented or considered bans or taxes in order to reduce plastic bags.

The first country to introduce a bag tax was Ireland. Consumers are charged 15 cents per bag at check out. China banned free plastic bags last summer. Taiwan, Bangladesh and South Africa prohibit the use of plastic bags.

Other island nations have also implemented plastic bag reduction campaigns. American Samoa has initiated legislation to ban fossil-fueled based plastic shopping bags. The Republic of the Palau has considered an excise tax on plastic bags.
[B] Invest in a reusable bag[/B]

Reusable bags need only be used eleven times to make a positive environmental impact. Each reusable bag has the potential to eliminate an average of 1,000 plastic bags over its lifetime, according to reusablebags.com.

In the long run, reusable bags save money, extends the life of the landfill. Most reusable bags are sturdier and can carry larger loads of groceries.
[I] Sources: resuablebags.com, epa.gov, CNMI Department of Commerce 2005 Household, Income, and Expenditures Survey[/I]