How Have Plastic Bags Negatively Affected the Environment?

Imagine one thousand years in the future. The majority of the human population has died out due to unsustainable methods of resource use. All this is in the ancient past, but still, one thing remains: plastic. As the waves roll upon the beach, they hold within their grasp plastic wrappers, containers, but most of all bags. They drift in the wind over America’s great prairies and are caught on rocks at the highest peaks. Animals are seen wrapped in plastic struggling to move and breathe while others lie motionless on the ground having given up the struggle to free themselves. Society’s descendents can no longer lie on the beach and enjoy the sun due to the thick layer of plastic covering the sand on the Earth’s beaches. Now think about this: is it worth it? The negative effects of the use of thin plastic bags outweigh the positive benefits. As the Earth’s population grows and grows, more and more resources are consumed. Every minute, one million thin plastic bags are consumed worldwide by grocery stores, department stores, and street vendors. Americans alone consume approximately one hundred-two billion bags a year. This means that the average American consumes about five hundred bags each. Plastic grocery bags are recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the “Most Ubiquitous Consumer Item in the World”, and Susan Freinkel, author of Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, stated that “Plastic bags have come to represent the collective sins of the age of plastic” (Doucette 37). The use of plastic and plastic bags is much larger of a problem than what the general public is aware of. Plastic bags were introduced to US supermarkets in 1977 as an alternative to paper. These new bags were cheaper to produce and much stronger than the paper bag which was the most widely used bag in the US prior to 1977. The even more convenient “t-shirt” style bag was introduced five years later, the style of bag that is still widely used today by the street vendor to the largest