Assemblyman Herb Conaway, D-Burlington, and Assemblyman Jack Conners, D-Camden, have sponsored a bill that would make New Jersey the first state to ban plastic in stores larger than 10,000 square feet, such as grocery, pharmacy chains and big-box stores like Target and Wal-Mart. If the bill succeeds in passing, retailers would have to reduce plastic bag use 50 percent by Dec. 31, 2009, and stop using them entirely by the end of 2010, according to published reports. Retailers would also need to provide bins to allow customers to recycle plastic bags as well as sell reusable bags.
A serious environmental problem, Conaway calls them, plastic bags take years to break down, they help fill up landfills and they take 12 million barrels of oil to a year make, he said.
The Record recently reported that plastic bags account for some 90 percent of bags used in stores. An estimated 100 billion of them are used in the United States each year, about 332 per person, the article said.
Only two percent of plastic bags are recycled in the United States, according to salon.com, and the rest, when discarded, can persist for centuries.
According to the Blue Ocean Society more than one million birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die every year from eating or getting entangled in plastic. The group estimates that 50 percent of all marine litter is some form of plastic.
Yes, plastic bags are convenient. Not ready to give them up? Work to be more conscious by reusing them again as much as possible. In terms of paper bags, while paper recycles better than plastic, energy is still used to produce them, creating pollution. And some 14 million trees are chopped down annually to produce the estimated 10 million grocery bags used by consumers.
Another solution, and the best one by far, is BYOB, bring your own bag. Many stores, such as Shoprite, A&P and Pathmark, now sell reusable canvas or cloth bags, for about 99 cents each. These stores also offer two cents back for each bag customers reuse. Other stores are working to reduce waste as well. Ikea offers plastic bags but charges five cents each with profits going to charity. Warehouse chains like BJs and Costco only offer cardboard boxes.
With so many reports daily of the effects of global warming, taking steps to reduce and reuse our shopping bags is a simple thing we can do to do out part.
