Global statistics for plastic bag consumption are staggering. It was estimated in 2001 that between 400 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are produced each year and something like 1% are actually recycled. The other 99% end up in landfills or, even worse, in our waterways, causing major problems for wildlife. An average plastic shopping bag is used for 5 minutes before being discarded and takes up to 1000 years to break down. Most shopping bags are made from polyethylene and do not biodegrade, instead they photodegrade - essentially breaking down into smaller pieces called nurdles. This is what environmentalists (and the media) are talking about when they refer to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or "Garbage Island" - a patch of debris "twice the size of Texas" floating in the Pacific Ocean. It's not really an island, but essentially a toxic soup made up of nurdles. One of the major issues is that these bits of plastic are often mistaken for food and consumed by marine life.
For the 1% of plastic bags that are actually recycled, the process of recycling (and manufacturing) Polyethylene requires large amounts of non-renewable resources, including petroleum and natural gas (see my blog post, Life is Plastic, for more info on types of plastics). Moreover, it costs more to recycle a plastic shopping bag then it does to manufacture a new one, so they are often tossed.
Pollution and energy concerns resulting from single-use plastic bags have gained a lot of attention recently. All over the world, cities (and in some cases entire countries and states) are implementing plastic bag fees in order to reduce manufacturing and consumption. Some places, including San Francisco, Mexico City, Italy, and Hawaii, have gone so far as to ban plastic bags altogether. Most surprisingly, China banned plastic bags in 2008 and in only 3 years, retail usage of plastic bags has dropped over 66%. That is over 24 billion bags (60,000 tonnes of plastic), which is equivalent to 3.6 million tonnes of oil. As a direct result of the plastic bag ban, China has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by over 10 million tonnes.
Since its inception in 2009, Toronto's plastic bag by-law has been credited with helping Toronto reduce its plastic bag consumption by more than half. Despite being an effective way to encourage consumers to reduce waste and use plastic bag alternatives, a city committee made up of executive council members voted last week to scrap the bag fee entirely. Next month, city council will vote on the matter and decide the fate of the program. Canada is already gaining attention for controversial environmental policies and scrapping the plastic bag fee here in Toronto is pushing us further into the wrong direction. Perhaps the policy needs to be be revamped, as some city councillors, such as Michelle Berardinetti, have suggested. However, considering that in just 3 years the by-law has made a powerful impact and looking at the results of the rest of the world's bag bans and fees, scrapping it altogether seems short sighted and ignorant.
If you support the plastic bag fee (or perhaps even a ban altogether), then I encourage you to write your city council representative and ask them to vote NO to scrapping the bag tax next month. Let them know how important it is to you to reduce the amount of plastic waste that ends up in Toronto's landfills.
For a list of councillors' email addresses, click here.
For Mayor Rob Ford's contact info, click here.
For a letter already written for you and just needs to be sent, see my next post, Letter to Toronto City Council. Simply copy & paste into your email and hit send. Simple.
I'll be keeping you up to date on Toronto's plastic bag fee, so stay tuned!
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content and updates!
Thanks for reading!
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