THE NEGATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS OF PLASTIC SHOPPING BAGS:

 

To transport goods purchased from stores, such as food and clothing, people use plastic bags. Although we are aware that plastic bags harm the environment, they are nonetheless often used. Plastic bags have taken a prominent place in the litter system when it comes to municipal solid trash. Numerous negative environmental effects, including animal suffocation, pollution, channel, river, stream obstruction, and terrain deformation, have been caused as a result. The general public, campaigners, and legislatures have expressed concern over these effects to the point where certain national governments have outlawed the use of plastic bags for shopping.

The issue of plastic bag waste in Ghana and other nations has numerous primary causes. For instance, South Africa has implemented parliamentary legislation to limit the production and use of plastic bags. Several European nations have enacted a levy on plastic bags in response to the harm that these bags cause to agricultural productivity. To reduce the manufacturing and usage of plastic bags, the Japanese government has also instituted a tax (Md-Jalil et al., 2013). A much better course of action than placing pressure on people to reduce their production and use of plastic bags is to outlaw their use and create substitutes. Even though imposing a tax on plastic bags helps to safeguard and maintain the fertility of agricultural land, the resulting continued and dominant use of plastic bags itself would negate the benefits or advantages of the levy.

Impact on the environment

The major impact of plastic bags on the environment is that it takes many years for them to decompose. In addition, toxic substances are released into the soil when plastic bags perish under sunlight and, if plastic bags are burned, they release a toxic substance into the air causing ambient air pollution. Simons (2005) suggests that owing to the unregulated accumulation of carcinogenic compounds, the use of plastic bags may allow inroads into cancerous diseases. Plastic bags are dumped indiscriminately into landfills worldwide that occupy tons of hectares of land and emit dangerous methane and carbon dioxide gases as well as highly toxic leachates from these landfills during their decomposition stage.

Waste from plastic bags poses a serious environmental danger to human and animal health. If plastic bags are not properly disposed of, they can impact the environment by causing littering and stormwater drain blockages.

Animals may also get tangled and drown in plastic bags. Animals often confuse the bags for food and consume them, therefore blocking their digestive processes. Animals becoming entanglement in marine debris, including plastic bags, may cause starvation, choking, laceration, infection, reduced reproductive success, and mortality (Katsanevakis, 2008). There were instances where large endangered tortoises were found to have suffocated because of the mistaken swallowing of plastic bags combined with seaweed (Thiel et al, 2003).

Plastics are now omnipresent in the marine environment and this worsening trend needs urgent action. Plastics have been identified as a problem in the marine environment since the 1970s, but the issue of plastic pollution in marine and freshwater environments has only recently been identified as a global problem. As a consequence, marine plastic bag pollution has become a noteworthy environmental concern for governments, scientists, non-governmental establishments, and the international community (Carpenter and Smith, 1972).

The presence of plastics in the marine environment poses several challenges that hinder economic development. Trapped plastic bags along coastlines produces an environmental challenge that has detrimental effects on tourism. Economic losses are linked to lower tourism earnings, adverse effects on tourist activities, and harm to the marine environment. Trapped shoreline plastic has a negative effect on shipping infrastructure, energy production, fishing, and aquaculture (Sivan, 2011).

Plastic bags in ocean waters is a significant and growing global pollution epidemic. It is an increasing source of contaminant, either introduced during processing or absorbed from the atmosphere. Compounds leaching from plastic bags has been found to be responsible for increasing levels of reported toxicity. Leaching toxicity from plastic waste should also be weighed when determining the effects of plastic pollution in oceans.

Plastic bags pose a threat not only to marine life but also to agricultural land. Plastic bags are accountable for the dilapidation of the atmosphere and agricultural land, which has inadvertently used up precious earth resources, in particular oil (Sugii, 2008). This now poses a major challenge to environmental and agricultural production. Discarded plastic bags that have already made their way into the field are not only particularly detrimental to farming but also severely harmful. The consequence of this would be the environmental deterioration of the so-called developed global society.

It is very unfortunate that, although plastic bags have been seen to have reduced agricultural production worldwide, there has been little significant awareness-raising to undertake proper, effective, and concrete proactive action. Indeed, few serious scientific investigations have been made by international organizations and the international community to reduce the ever-increasing consumption of plastic bags.

Plastic bags should be prohibited globally and their biodegradable equivalents should be implemented to address these gross and harmful issues.

 

Recommendations

The public should be informed not to use plastic bags, but to use eco-friendly alternative bags made from fabric, natural fibers, and paper to reduce the problems associated with plastic bag waste.

Regulation against the indiscriminate use and recycling of waste from plastic bags is strongly recommended, as well as restriction of the free sale of plastic bags by retailers.

In the United States, single-use plastic bag is a significant worry for local governments. Plastic bags remain a major source of land-based litter and marine debris, which obstruct stormwater management systems due to their tremendously low reuse and recycling rate. In reaction, local governments have taken a number of steps designed to minimize the store-level use of single-use shopping bags in the following main categories: bans, fees, and levying taxes; minimum product size of bags; public awareness requirements; and retailer take-back initiatives.

Convery et al., (2007) also explain that the Republic of Ireland introduced a levied tax on plastic shopping bags in 2002, which had hitherto been provided free at points of sale to customers. The consequence of the tax on the use of plastic bags in retail outlets was intense. There was a greater percentage decrease in use, with a related benefit in the form of reduced littering with adverse effects on the environment.

In an effort to monitor the environmental issues posed by plastic shopping bags, the government of South Africa merged regulatory elements with a ‘per-bag tax’ similar to that imposed by the Irish government. Plastic bag charging started with a fixed nominal price per bag across all retailers. With the implementation of the tax, the use of plastic bags dropped dramatically across retailers. However, the paid levy only had short-run success, and as soon as the price was set to a lower rate, the demand picked up. The levy’s effectiveness has declined, despite its extensive application at checkout points, and customers have continued to steadily increase their consumption rates.

Even so, the combination of legislation and pricing has successfully curbed the short-term use of plastic bags. Additional investigation indicates that the legislation’s impact may rise over time (Hasson et al., 2007). They further elucidated that single-use plastic shopping bag is one of the leading causes of environmental and socio-economic problems worldwide, which has led to universal calls for the use of reduction intervention strategies.

 

Conclusion

There is a need to minimize our plastic use to effectively minimize plastic waste. This means modifying our everyday habits, not using plastic when there is a good alternative, and only using plastic when it is strictly necessary. Plastic bags can be reused or used for different purposes. It is necessary to think about how they can be reused before disposing of them.

 

Education is another critical tool for behavioral improvement by educating people about the environmental and health expense of using plastic bags. We need to raise awareness in communities about poor waste disposal activities. Other actions that can be taken to limit the impact of plastic bags on the environment include taking part in neighborhood clean-up efforts, voluntarily recycling household waste, avoiding littering and illegal dumping of plastic shopping bags, using eco-friendly materials as an alternative, and adopting legislation which would make the use of plastic bags less attractive