Continuous use of plastic bags has acute negative effects on our environment. Many problems arise from the use of plastic bags top of them being pollution. Pollution is, however, general and so specifically when pollution occurs in the ocean for example and the plastic bags find their way to the ocean floor they lead to the death of marine life. Many marine lives in many cases end up ingesting plastic bags leading to their death or even choke from the same due to entanglement. Several environmental studies show that turtles confuse plastic bags with jellyfish thus they end up eating the same and dying in the process (Niaounakis, 2017).
Plastic bags come from non-renewable sources of energy like petroleum, and so their continuous use means that the natural resource depletion goes on as well. These resources continue to diminish, and there is intense damage to the environment due to the extraction of petroleum to support the production of plastic bags. The net effect is devastating and thus requires immediate attention (UNEP, 2005).
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To reduce the use of plastic bags and primarily to mitigate the effects on the environment the best way is to have a recycling process where all plastics do not find their way to the environment but get reused after the initial use (Wagner, 2009). Recycling will help reduce the damage to the environment due to the extraction of petroleum and also void the pollution of marine life by plastic bags thus limit the deaths of turtles.
A recycling plant is relatively cheaper to set up, and its operations are not as expensive as when extracting petroleum from the earth's surface. It will save the government cost of cleaning the environment as well as the cost of obtaining petroleum. Recycled plastic bags are also cheaper to the consumers. Thus the idea of recycling is cost friendly.
References
Niaounakis, M. (2017). Management of marine plastic debris: prevention, recycling, and waste management . Oxford, United Kingdom: Elsevier/William Andrew Applied Science.
Selection, design, and implementation of economic instruments in the solid waste management sector in Kenya: the case of plastic bags . (2005). Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme.
Wagner, V. (2009). Recycling . Detroit, MI: Greenhaven Press.
