Thinking Geographically About Plastic Grocery Bags

         Seemingly flimsy, but practically indestructible plastic grocery bags are a hot topic. After watching "Battle of the Bag" and learning some of the ways that these common bags cause different kinds of harm, I will not be casually forgetting my reusable grocery bag anytime soon. Until viewing the informative documentary, I had never heard of the mosquito and Malaria problems in Nigeria that are directly related to plastic bag pollution. When it rains, the many bags that litter the area fill with water creating a mosquito’s perfect breeding grounds with thousands of little pools of stagnant water. When thinking of plastic pollution, I normally think of wildlife ingesting them or birds getting stuck in them, but now I know there are other implications as well.

The bag problem can be dealt with by force, like in India, where it is illegal to have plastic bags that aren't a certain thickness. They have a special task force that checks the local markets for the contraband, confiscates them and fines the guilty merchants. The issue can also be approached with education, like the environmental spokesperson in England who educated the merchants in her town by showing them the video that she made in Hawaii. They saw some of the environmental effects of the plastic bags, and voluntarily decided not to use them anymore. They spread the word throughout the city and encouraged people to carry their own bags to the store.

I think that if we start locally, and educate consumers about how the bags are affecting the planet negatively and in different ways it will catch on like it did in the small British town. Being encouraging and little by little changing our wasteful behaviors will spread and inspire other communities to do the same, and thereby become a global solution. The video made it clear that it’s obvious that the problem is much larger than just cleaning up the yard or taking out the trash, and that even if we stop using the plastic bags, we will be dealing with this problem for a long time.

When the bag promoter/manufacturer said that plastic bags are misunderstood, he was grasping for any reason that his big business shouldn't go under. He said that they can be reused, and we should celebrate their strength, but what he doesn't understand is that they cannot be reused over and over again for as long as the plastic is still strong. People use them to pick up after their dogs or to clean their cat’s litter boxes, but we really shouldn't be sealing that waste in a bag that won’t biodegrade for many years, and I doubt that people are emptying those bags and reusing them again for something else. The manufacturer wants to stay in business and not admit that plastic bags, made out of fossil fuels, are bad for the environment. I would say that the bags are not misunderstood, but rather he refuses to understand.