If you have watched those transparent little bodies floating about, you will immediately understand why it is so easy for marine life to mistake plastic bags for jelly fish. Plastic Blindness.According to Clean Up Australia, Australians use 3.92 billion plastic bags a year - more than 10 million new bags every day. Australians dump 7,150 recyclable plastic bags into landfills every minute or 429,000 bags every hour. That will reduce substaintially now single use bags are banned, but we still have a long way to go.Twenty million pieces of plastic enter the world’s oceans every day. All this plastic ends up in the stomachs, wings and fins of marine life. It suffocates, strangles, deforms and sickens fauna all over the world every minute of every day. Plastic is all around us in our streets, on our beaches and pathways.Next time you are tempted to take a plastic bag by the harried check out chick (who might be a bloke) or you stuff your groceries into a plastic bag at the self serve, think about the thousands of acres of ocean bed, streams, lakes, eddies and dams littered with plastic and plastic bags and say NO. Really loud. And hand across your reusable bag. Fixing the problem all starts with a single person saying NO to plastic bags. And that person could be you. Giving up plastic can be tough and here are 4 tips to make it super easy!
Plastic bags are particularly bad in water as they are lightweight, they float and they do not break down. When they end up in waterways and the ocean they kill and wreak havoc with aquatic life as they entangle, choke and suffocate. Plastic bags are also serial killers. First they kill and while the animals they kill decomposes, the plastic bag generally stays in tact enough to go on to kill again.
Biodegradable and oxodegradable bags might be made from products like corn (which is more than likely GM), but they still typically require sun, light and heat to begin the process of degradation. You may have noticed that there isn't much sun or light in landfill. So, if you are offered a ‘green’ plastic bag, it’s best to refuse and take your own reusable one or none at all.