Many people forget about garbage as soon as it’s taken away, but it doesn’t simply disappear. A lot of garbage doesn’t even make it to the dump. Instead, it blows around in the wind, get stuck up in trees, or sails off into waterways. One especially sneaky item that seems to end all over the place is the simple plastic bag.
Around the world, people use about a million plastic bags every single minute. Hundreds of thousands of whales and sea turtles and other sea animals die every year from mistaking plastic bags for food. Plastic bags don’t biodegrade: they photodegrade. This means they break down into tinier and tinier pieces of toxic bits that pollute the air, water, and soil. Many countries – including China, India, Taiwan, South Africa, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Norway, and Spain – have either gotten rid of plastic bags altogether or are making people pay money for them so they use them less. Individual cities such as San Francisco have also banned plastic bags. Is this an issue in your city?
What happens to the billions of bags that are still being used every year? Many are building up in our oceans and adding to huge masses of floating plastic-trash islands. The biggest one is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that it twice the size of Texas. You can show the kids a great cartoon video about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and real-life video of kids who are making a difference at www.greengorilla.com
What can you do? Ban the bag! Make your own reusable bags in class. Work with local grocery stores to provide reusable bags for people to buy. Have the students make signs warning other about the perils of the plastic bag. Help them list ways to reuse the plastic bags already lying around your house. What ways did the students come up with?