A simple item that people love to use and have used for years is continually destroying the environment. Plastic bags, on average, are only used for 25 minutes and are then thrown in the garbage. Doing this over a period of years greatly affects the environment and will continue to do so unless we find alternatives like reusable tote bags.
Here are some of the dangers of using plastic bags and continually discarding them in the trash.
Dangerous to Wildlife
In 2000, an autopsy of a beached whale's stomach revealed 20 square feet of single-use plastic shopping bags, which took up its entire stomach. Over the last 30 years, since plastic bag usage has become significantly more popular, similar cases have occurred with various animals across the planet. According to One Green Planet, at least 260 animal species are at risk of entanglement or ingestion due to plastic bags. These plastic bags are choking and poisoning all of the earth's birds, fish, and other animals. Hopefully, once people realize how damaging these plastic bags are to the planet's wildlife, they will stop using plastic bags and start shopping with custom reusable bags.
Waste of Finite Natural Resources
The production of plastic bags uses up some of the earth's most sought-after natural resources. Roughly 100 million barrels of oil are needed to make all the world's plastic bags in a single year. Simply stopping the production of all these plastic bags can drastically improve the environment and preserve millions of barrels of oil.
They Last Extremely Long
When you throw away a plastic bag you might think to yourself that you properly disposed of that bag because you'll never see it again. That's not true, however, because plastic bags can take hundreds of years to decompose. These unsightly bags will be floating in our oceans and on our coastlines for decades if we don't do something about it.
There are more than just environmental benefits of reusable bags like tote bags rather than using plastic. As far as shopping is concerned, it's much easier to pack a bunch of items in tote bags than it is to pile all those items in multiple plastic bags. You'll also enjoy the added benefit of knowing you're making a difference, which will actually improve your life.
