In addition to the environment, marine animals mistakenly eat plastic bags due to people’s littering, which keeps killing ocean wildlife. The clean and blue oceans in California always attract tourists to spend time enjoying it during their holiday. Nonetheless, trashes littered by people gather together in the oceans due to ocean current, and plastic bags play a key role. As plastic bags dissolve, it forms a collection of marine debris, which forms Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Generally speaking, Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a lot of marine debris is collected together by the ocean current.
People can distinguish this garbage easily, but marine animals don’t have this ability. According to California Coastal Commission, marine debris harms wildlife through entanglement, ingestion and disruption of habitat. The commission specifies, “The Laysan albatross is a sea bird that nests in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands. The adult birds collect plastic debris (along with food) from the ocean to feed to their chicks. In a study of dead chicks during 1994 and 1995, 97. 6% of carcasses were found to contain plastic” (“The Problem with Marine Debris).
Firstly, Northwest Hawaiian Islands locate around North Pacific Ocean, so the pollution affects California marine animals in some ways. Also, in Los Angeles, there are various water fowl within the Los Angeles River. Animals migrate from one place to another, so water fowls in Los Angeles have high chance to be affected by marine debris in North Hawaiian Islands. Those birds need to cultivate their children, but they don’t have hands to get rid of plastic in their food; accordingly, their next generations survive with plastic, so they get used to plastic debris.
Moreover, the unbelievable high percentage shows that it’s been a long time that those birds are suffering from people’s inappropriate behavior. Ironically, plastic companions those birds in their whole lives, even when they pass away. Other than seabirds, sea turtles also get affected by marine debris because they eat plastic bags. The reason they eat plastic bags is the small piece of plastic looks like a jellyfish, which is their favorite food. After sea turtles realize that their food in abnormal, they forage food cautiously.
They become skeptical of their food, so they prefer not to eat rather than eat something wrong. Sadly, some of them die because of hunger, and this may cause to become an endangered species over time. The opposition argues that the plastic bag ban will harm the economy because it will shut many companies down. Since people highly rely on using plastic bags, they also provide many commercial opportunities for the market; meanwhile, many workers are hired by these factories. The opponents pointing out that the ban will lead to a majority of workers lose their jobs, and businessmen may face with bankrupt.
Admittedly, such big plastic industries dedicate to the society and enhance the growth of the economy, but there should be some other opportunities for them. Innovative companies working in this field may start growing after the ban is implemented. Most importantly, money should not be an excuse for people to pollute the environment. Therefore, plastic bag ban should be taken effect on everyone to protect environment. There are many communities, groups and people spend their time advocating how plastic bags damage the environment.
For instance, Californians Against Waste, a nonprofit organization founded in 1977, strives to prevent pollution and protect California’s environment many years. They sponsored and help complete almost all of California’s predominant recycling legislations. Recently, they have succeeded in contributing in exposing the plastic bag ban in public. They will keep on preventing plastic bags pollution, and they want to make sure the ban will be effective in California State. Not only do people stop producing plastic bags will impact the economy, the pollution they produce will also affect the economy.
California Agasint Waste concludes that single-use plastic bags cost taxpayers money to clean up. They state that California spends around $34. 2 million to $107 million every year to prevent people from littering plastic bags into the waters (“The Problem with Plastic Bags”). It is weird that people spend the money producing plastic bags to earn more; at the same time, they spend money again dealing with their disposal. Such huge amount of money can be invested into other fields to make society better, such as inventing new materials to decompose plastic bags faster. However, people are indifferent to the disastrous effect.
Overall, there are hundreds of groups gather together to fight against plastic problem, and try to unveil the lies that plastic companies make. The only reason is they love the Earth. There is only one Earth that people can live in right now. No matter how much money the industries earn every year, they cannot use money to reduce the pollution people make; in addition, they cannot use money to reproduce a new and clean Earth for people. Therefore, they could do nothing if there was no Earth. The ban directly reduces the use of plastic bags so that people remain a sustainable environment to live in.
There are some communities already having policies to encourage citizens not to use plastic bags; moreover, the outcome can be evaluated through their feedback. A report from San Jose shows that the plastic bags ban has a positive effect on community. After Bring Your Own Bag Ordinance (BYOB) was effective in the San Jose community, the outcome showed that 62. 4 percent of bags were reusable, and up to 43 percent of customers don’t use a bag when they go to retail stores. Compared the outcome with the data collected before the ordinance, only 3. 6 percent of bags were reusable, and 19 percent of customers preferred not to use a bag (Romanow).
Although the data looks embarrassed before the ordinance is put into practice, hard work finally pays off. Reusable bags are used commonly after the ordinance, so people pay more attention on environmental issues; also, an increasing number of customers choose to not using bag when they are shopping, which means that the ordinance has been successfully bringing citizens to a right track. Therefore, evidence shows that the ban is a practical method to solve the issue. Analogously, if the ban takes effect on California State, it will be an increasing percent of citizens are willing to join the movement to protect the environment.
Ideally, the ban will also affect other states to participate in stopping using single-use bags. It is also possible to promote the plastic bag ban to the world and evoke international public attention. Union is strength. A tiny movement can lead to a huge effect, which may rewrite the history of human being. Ultimately, people raise the awareness of environmental issues when they witness their contribution to the environment, though they have to pay the price first. China had enacted plastic bags nationwide on June 1, 2008. The effect is obvious because more and more citizens in China don’t use plastic bags anymore.
For instance, every time when my family goes shopping in the store, we bring clothing bags on our own to carry our shopping. We don’t use plastic bags because supermarket may charge us for money; moreover, we believe that clothing bags are more sustainable than paper bags because we can reuse it for more than a year. We also count how much money will it cost if we forget to bring our clothing bags. The result comes out that it can cost us up to 20 yuan in a month, which can offer more than three meals for hungry people. This surprises us, so we decide to spread out the truth to our relatives.
They also join the action and spread out to more people around them. Consequently, it becomes a trend to put a clothing bag in everyone’s handbag, and many fancy clothing bags are produced with the recycled cloth. People are pleaded with what they have contributed to build a comfortable community on their own. Nevertheless, people always complain about how dirty the environment is today. Although they claim that they hope to live in a friendly environment and would like to contribute to communities to make it better, they have polluted the environment years after years.
They cannot feel how dangerous the situation is if they don’t taste the bitterness, so their commitments are empty talk. Therefore, it is better to let people pay the price first so that they care about the consequence of their behavior. Then, they raise their awareness that it is time for them to pay greater attention to environmental issues. The widely use of plastic bags accumulate a stack of waste in landfills as well as in the oceans. However, the time it takes to degrade this waste is long, and it becomes a threat to our next generation and marine wildlife.
To avoid this problem, a plastic bag ban should be implemented as soon as possible to change the current, severe situation. The charging for purchasing plastic bags can donate to organizations to improve the solutions. Many facts prove that using plastic bags is harmful to human, while people selectively forget the danger of doing this. Thus, it is highly recommended that everyone in society popularizes the knowledge of not using plastic bags; preferably, schools can educate about this concept to student when they are young, so the awareness can be built from an early age. Please save our Earth from small start. Say no to plastic bags.
