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What is wrong with plastic bags ending up in landfills?

1. They are not biodegradable. That is a good thing. That means that the carbon in the bags is effectively sequestered from the environment. Sequestering carbon helps to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

2. Landfills produce Methane gas, a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Yes, land fills do produce methane gas. Plastic bags do not. They are not biodegradable. Biodegradable means that the environment breaks them down into methane. Paper bags are biodegradable, they get converted to methane gas. Do not complain about methane gas, it is an excellent fuel. My electrical utility uses methane from a local land fill at a small power plant. Sure it is converted to CO2, but methane is worse in the atmosphere than CO2.

3. They occupy space in landfills. Yes, but they occupy less space than any other packaging of the same volume.

4. They are not recycled. That is not the fault of the plastic bag industry, that is the fault of the people that take them home. I recycle all of my plastic bags. I use them to pick up dog droppings. They get tied closed and then go to the landfill (you are not supposed to compost droppings from Carnivores). The dog droppings then do not decompose to methane and CO2 because they are locked away in a non-biodegradable plastic bag. More carbon sequestered.

Learn more about this author, Patrick Coyle.
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