PLASTIC BAGS: PLASTIC TRASH?

PLASTIC BAGS: PLASTIC TRASH?

Nowadays, there is a global worried about protection and care of environment. Technology and industries are considering environment’s good treatment like a necessary condition at the time of elaborate a product, even the simplest. For example, we have the plastic bags that supermarkets give for free to its clients. In the last days we have been exposed to an advertisement announcing a new kind of bags 50% more biodegradable than traditional ones, which means a benefit for nature. The fact is no matter how much biodegradable be able to be, plastic bags are a menace and generate big damage to the environment and to the beings that live in the diverse habitats. Next are uncovered some reasons that support this affirmation.

In first place, plastic bags are made with polyethylene, a thermoplastic derived form oil. After decomposition this chemical creation produces petro-polymers, smallest and toxic components that finally will contaminate the soils and fluvial routes. As a consequence, these microscopic particles could begin to be a part of animals diet chain. According to the WWF’s 2005 report, the effect on the wild life can be catastrophic.

Second, a traditional plastic bag takes between 50 and 120 years to be totally decomposed, depending of the elaboration, and it has already been mentioned that the product of this decomposition is very harmful. It is supposed that one of this bags will decompose in half of the time. Even if this is true, in 10 years the damage caused to the environment it will be enormous and at the end the product it will be the same and this poisonous components will spread all over the place where the residues of this bags are deposited damaging the environment and its inhabitants, including the human being.

Finally, we have the damage caused to the animals. When the bags are not useful anymore, most of them are rejected in an inadequate way, contaminating forests, rivers and seas. Constantly, fishes get caught in this bags and then get suffocated and die. The bags in the water look very similar to jellyfish and to plankton. Valuable animals for the ecosystem like turtles, confuse them and swallow them, which causes an almost immediately death or make them get sick and kill them slowly, that is worse. On the ground, birds, raccoons and others animals make the bags part of its nests and dens, modifying the ecosystem and damaging the harmony of the habitats.

In conclusion, the plastic bags, despite of its usefulness and the efforts of industries and technology to make them more biodegradable, generate big damage to the environment and they are a hazard for the alive beings that inhabit it. The real responsibility at the time of using them or rejecting them appropriately is ours. Is in our hands to obtain a healthy and clean environment, for our own benefit and of our children. Anyway, it will always better to use a non-plastic bag.


VALMIRO NARVAEZ-GOENAGA