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Myths About Plastics 1. San Francisco banned plastic bags and so should we. a. In San Francisco there has been an increase in use of paper bags. Switching back to paper increases greenhouse gas emissions, energy use and waste. 2. The trend today is banning plastic. a. Nationwide, the legislative trend is recycling. Banning products is a way of going backwards; using technology to enhance efficiency and solve problems is the way of the future. 3. Ireland’s bag tax led to a 95% reduction in plastic bag use. a. The plastic bag tax in Ireland resulted in more plastic bag consumption. While the sale of plastic shopping bags declined almost 90%, sales of other plastic bags such as garbage bags increased by 400 percent. 4. Plastic Bags Cannot be recycled. a. In 2006 more than 812 million pounds of plastic film and bags were recycled. 5. Plastic bags are the largest component of landfills and the primary component of litter. a. The item most frequently littered in landfills is paper- on average, it accounts for more than 40% of a landfill’s content . Cirgarette butts, chewing gum, and candy wrappers account for about 95% of all littler in the English speaking world . Education as well as responsible use and disposal of all materials and products is the key to reducing litter. 6. Plastic grocery bags take 1,000 years to decompose in a landfill. a. In today’s landfill virtually nothing, not paper, food, plastic or even compostable products decompose because the landfills are designed to be as stable and dry as possible. Research has shown that when excavated form a landfill, newspapers from the 1960’s can be found and even read. 7. Plastic bags feed our addiction to oil. a. Plastic bags are very energy efficient. Also, 80% of the plastic used to make plastic bags in the US comes from natural gas, not oil. b. Less than .05% of each barrel of oil consumed in the US goes into making all of the plastic bags used in the US, while 93% - 95% of every barrel is burned for fuel and heating purposes. 8. Everyone should use/mandate compostable bags. a. In order to breakdown, compostable bags must be sent to an industrial composting facility, not backyard piles or municipal composting centers. There are very few of the facilities in the US and where these facilities are not available, compostable bags will sit in landfills because they cannot be recycled. b. Also, if compostable bags are accidentally mixed into regular plastic bag recycling they will contaminate all of the recycling stream. 9. Plastic Bags make up a large portion of US Solid Waste Stream. a. Probably due to reuse, plastic bags make up less than 0.5% of the US municipal solid waste stream. 10. Plastic Bags can only be recycled with other plastic bags. a. In addition to grocery bags, you can recycle other plastic retail bags, dry cleaning bags, newspaper bags, plastic wrap from products like paper towels and toilet paper, and all bags labeled with recycling codes #2 (HDPE) and #4 (LLDPE) can be included wherever plastic bags are collected for recycling. 11. Banning plastic bags will reduce our dependence on oil. a. In the US, nearly 80% of polyethylene, the type of plastic used to make plastic bags is produced from natural gas, not oil. 12. There are no places where plastic bags can be recycled. a. Most retail establishments have a plastic bag recycling bin located at their store, merely ask the store where the bin is located. US Environmental Protection Agency.Municipal Waste in the United States: 2006 Facts and Figures. See: http://www.epa.gov/e[aoswer/non-hw/muncpl/msw.htm US Department of Energy’s and National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s U.S. Life Cycle Inventory Database. See http://www.nrel.gov/lci |
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