by Jason Quinn

Created on: March 28, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

Plastic bags are mostly non bio-degradable and even the degradable ones take up to 20 years to break down. This means they hurt not only the environment, but can harm animals; i.e. sheep will often curiously poke their noses into a plastic bag, panic and suffocate as it sticks to their face when they breathe in.

People use too many plastic bags. We take for granted that they are free at the supermarket and pick up more. Sadly, this drastically increases plastic waste, which last year was calculated at 1,678,900 tonnes. The production of plastic bags also uses chemicals, which are detrimental to life.

When a slight charge was imposed for plastic bags in Ireland, there was a 95% decrease in demand for them. People began reusing their bags, helping the environment in spades!

As you can see, putting even a slight charge on plastic bags causes a massive decrease in bags used and an increase in reuse of bags whilst also helping the environment. I believe that a charge on plastic bags should be mandatory, for the sake of our planet.
Educating people on the dangers of littering will also help the environments battle no end as they learn to recycle and reuse.

It is also important to consider, that since the supermarkets are giving away the bags for free; if you take less or a charge is placed on them, resulting in you taking less, it allows the supermarket to charge you less for the item's in your trolley, meaning you save money.

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