Mariah Burkhardt
Sharon Janusz
ENG 121: English Composition I
30 October 2014
The True Price for Plastic
Did you know that plastic bags are one of the largest sources of litter in the world? According to research discussed on “How Stuff Works”, plastic bags can take anywhere from two hundred to a thousand years to break down. They also give off toxic chemicals when burned, so burning is a hazardous way to rid of the material. Because of this it is difficult to safely dispose of plastic. According to the same site, less than 1% of plastic bags used in the US are recycled due to recycling costs being much higher than the recovered plastic is worth. States are attempting to find new strategies to reduce the number of plastic carry-out bags from grocery stores and other retail outlets to help with the issues arising. They believe regulating the use of bags can lower harmful impacts to oceans, rivers, lakes and the wildlife that inhabits them. Reducing bag use can also relieve pressure on landfills and waste management. One of the methods being experimented with is charging for the plastic bags given out at grocery stores. This is definitely something stores should try to help out both economically and environmentally.

Economically, charging for plastic could help the world in a few ways. It would profit the community, it would put more money into recycling as more people buy reusable bags, and it could cut costs on manufacturing these bags, making it possible to put money elsewhere. Charging for plastic would create an extra income for grocers and make it possible to lower item prices in the store, which would greatly benefit the community. Imagine if all items were price cut by 20%, even 40%? How amazing would that be? Your average grocery trip that costs $200 plus would be half that. Our poverty rate in each city would drop dramatically if this were the case. Some would say that this isn't possible because people would just bring their own bags so there would be no profit, but how often do we forget things like that? I forget my bags all the time, and so do many others. Also, wealthier people wouldn't be bothered by a ten or twenty cent charge for their bags, whats a few dollars to them? And even if there was no profit due to people bringing re-usable bags to the store, isn't that a good thing? Eliminating plastic bags as a whole would save companies money on manufacturing, so it would still be a financial benefit. Another benefit to charging for plastic is the boost it would give to recycling. Most reusable shopping bags are made of recyclable materials, so the more of those we buy, the more money there will be put into the companies making these bags, putting more profit into recycling industries. Plus, because these bags are re-usable we don't have to purchase them as often as we would with the plastic bags, maybe once a year, and the reusable bags at Walmart are only fifty cents each. That's $5 a year if you want ten bags. Who wouldn't pay that for such a benefit to the earth?

A concern some have is that the money they are paying for these bags isn't going to benefit the community. An article on ESL shows that it would...
When there is such a big issue with the overuse of plastic and the damage it can cause years down the road, is there anything one person can do? An individual in my hometown thought so, and high school student Dustin Michaels decided to do something about it. He initiated a movement at his school to ban plastic bags. Beyond that, he brought the issue to the forefront with our City Council. The result in less than a year is a 20-cent bag fee on single-use plastic and paper bags. The fee goes to public education and compensating stores for associated costs. Many in the community already use cloth bags, but the fee is justified to help everyone remember to bring their bags.

“If I had a nickel for every bag” Mayor Bloomberg of new your stated on “Info Wars” in 2006, expressing his desire to tax five cents for every bag taken home from a purchase. Struggling to make New York greener, he encouraged citizens to reduce, or even diminish, their use of plastic. The mayor was using that tax to cut back on the city's disposal bill because it led to a huge decrease in the use of plastic, meaning less trash. The five cent charge could also raise over a million dollars a year per store. Let's say there's three hundred customers a day at each checkout in a big name grocery store, and there's an average of ten bags per customer. If they all bought plastic bags for five cents, that's $150 per day per register, and most stores have twenty. That's $3,000 a day just for selling plastic bags. Multiply that by thirty days in a month, then by twelve for the year. That's $1,080,000 a year from a single store going towards the economy. That number would certainly be lower when people started bringing their own bags, but it would still be a profit, and our environment would benefit. On “Info Wars”, a citizen named Denise Lute gave her opinion on the bag tax. She stated

I think it's a great idea. There are way too many plastic bags used at grocery stores anyways. We need to start being more Eco-conscious. If I was going to be charged for every bag of groceries I buy, when I'm already paying for the product, I would be sure to bring my own bag. That's the whole point isn't it? Yeah it would be a nice profit for the community but the goal is to save our environment.

Environmentally, charging for plastic would be a literal lifesaver for a large group of wildlife. The use of plastic bags is part of many people’s daily life, but something that isn't realized by most is how hazardous plastic bags can be to our environment. They end up in our oceans and waste resources. Plastic pollutes our oceans, lakes, and rivers, causing many animals to consume them and their toxic chemicals. Taxing these bags would begin to prevent use, which would lower manufacturing, saving millions of our wildlife.

According to the “Huffington Post”, in our oceans, plastic bags constantly swirl around as part of a trash vortex the size of Texas. Marine life mistake the plastic for food and consume the chemicals, killing them. These bags can also trap marine life from movement, causing suffocation. National Geographic states that four to five trillion plastic bags have been produced globally from 2002-2008. Each year, a hundred billion plastic bags are thrown away by Americans. However, they aren't really “thrown away”. Trash doesn't just disappear when the trash man comes, it crowds landfills. Because it isn't biodegradable, plastic can sit in a landfill for a thousand years before the sun breaks it down. We are wasting resources (oil for example) to make the plastic. Also according to National Geographic, twelve million barrels of oil are used in America every year to make plastic bags, wouldn't reducing be easier? That oil could instead be used for gasoline, lowering gas prices. Who wouldn't want that?

If we continue to use plastic bags the way we do, there will be devastating repercussions. Our oceans will be more polluted, our rain forests would be cut to stumps (yes, trees help make plastic too), marine life will cease to exist, and land will be filled with plastic waste. Marine life is one of the most important things to save. We can't allow their extinction because of interdependency (things depending on one another). Eventually, all animals (humans too over time) will die out due to starvation because animals depend on each other to live. If we completely killed off a food source we would be killing off all species in the long run. Back to rain forests, according to “Blue Planet”, the Amazon rain forest produces more than 20% of the world's oxygen, air we need to survive. Also, the Amazon is home to over two million types of organisms, over two thousand of the plants that grow there are used for medicines that fight against cancer and other harsh diseases, and 80% of the world's diet grows in the Amazon as well. The list just goes on. If we kill the forests, we kill the animals, and ourselves. In addition to all of this, most of the world's fossil fuels will eventually be used up. The oil used to manufacture plastic, run cars, machines, and heat our homes, will disappear. It's a good comparison to the movie Walle. Earth was so full of garbage and waste that humans couldn't live there anymore. At this rate, landfills are just going to keep growing. Our future will look quite similar to the Disney movie.

Plastic bags should be taxed, simple as that. It will lead to decrease of usage, and boost our economy in the meantime. Plastic is hazardous and in no way benefits our environment. Each bag should have a tax, reducing production, and hopefully in the long run, preventing the bags from causing environmental disasters.

Works Cited
Blue Planet. “Amazon Rainforest” 2007. Web. 28 October 2014

Harris, William. “How long does it take for plastics to biodegrade?” How Stuff Works, 2010. Web. 28 October 2014Jones, Alex “New York Mayor Bloomberg Wants to Tax Plastic” Info Wars 2013. Web. 28 October

2014

National Public Radio. “Garbage Mass is Growing in the Pacific” 2008. Web. 28 October 2014

Roach, John “Are Grocery Bags Sacking the Environment?” National Geographic, 2009. Web 28 October 2014

Scheller, Alissa “Plastic In Our Oceans” Huffington Post, 2014. Web. 28 October 2014