The first week of September, my family and I had the chance to spend a week on a beach near Santa Cruz, California. After spending time there and being close to some of California’s agricultural lands, there’s a lot on my mind.
One of the areas to look at further is plastic–I can’t seem to let this subject go. When it comes to plastic and our oceans, there’s even more to think about. According to the book, 50 Simple Things, the United Nations estimates that there are 46,000 pieces of plastic per square mile in the world’s oceans. Plastic bags in oceans kill a million seabirds and 100,000 sea mammals a year.
As we walked along the beach, we didn’t see much garbage there. It seemed that our stretch of beach was being cared for on a regular basis. But I know that’s not the case everywhere. And the worst offenders, when it comes to the garbage that ends up in our oceans and on our beaches, are plastic bags. According to Greenpeace, Americans discard 100 billion plastic bags a year–only 2% of which get recycled. The rest end up in landfills and often in our oceans. So, the solution of course should be an easy one–if we use less plastic bags, fewer will get into our oceans.
I realize it can be difficult to stop using plastic bags. Look what happened to us in California–we didn’t bring our reusable bags in our suitcase and one of the stores we shopped at only offered plastic. We weren’t able to find a Whole Foods nearby (they no longer provide plastic bags at checkout). But…if every shopper takes just ONE LESS PLASTIC BAG PER MONTH, hundreds of millions of plastic bags could be eliminated as garbage each year! And if we each bought net bags to use for produce purchases, think how many less plastic produce bags we would use each and every week!
Of course, this comes back to practicing new habits. Today my husband went to the store for our family and forgot to take the net bags. Unfortunately, we ended up with about 10 undesired plastic bags in our house. So now what do we do when this happens? Well, we can rinse out the bags and reuse them. We can also use them for our pet’s waste. It’s not a perfect solution but at least we’ll do something more with them than simply toss them immediately in the garbage. And we will put them in the garbage rather than risk that they somehow enter our waterways. Next time my husband does the shopping, I’ll just have to make sure he has everything he needs to help us be environmentally supportive.
DID YOU KNOW…
Though oceans cover over 70% of the world’s surface, 80% of the pollution in them–including garbage–originates on land.
The North Pacific Garbage Patch near Hawaii is a vortex made up of 100 million tons of trash–90% of which is plastic–that is drawn by winds and currents from land sources. This whirlpool of plastic, junk, and dead sea life is now larger than the continental U.S.
Though plastic bags take 1,000 years to completely degrade in the ocean; sun, wind, and water break them into tiny bits–which sea creatures mistake for plankton, a main food source. There are now 13 lbs. of plastic for every 2 lbs. of plankton in the vortex!
Last but not least, persistent pollutants bond to these tiny pieces of plastic, making them toxic. These toxins end up in the fish which end up on our plates and in us!
FOR TODAY…I’m going to try and go the rest of this week without accumulating any new plastic bags. That means, no matter which store I and my family go to this week, we will not take a plastic bag from them. We’ll either just take our purchases in hand or bring reusable bags along.
