Are plastic bags more damaging than global warming?

Question

Are plastic bags more damaging than global warming?

Answer 1

no not at all

Answer 2

yeah...do you know how much electricity it takes to charge a battery for a videocam! all those ppl walking around recording plastic bags floating in the wind! it is not beautiful...it is ruining the environment

Answer 3

Global warming is worst.

Answer 4

plastic bags when thought of can be regarded as more environmentally friendly than calico bags unless you are a obedient worshiper of the media's oppression. Plastic bags are cheap to manufacture, using minimal industry energy consumerage, output hardly any CO2 in the process, re-usable and are made of nearly the most abundant resource on our planet. So i will answer your question with another question. Are Calico Bags made by third world more damagingto our society and planet than global warming.

Short answer NO.

Answer 5

No.Beacause Global Warming is not something people can control .It just happens.Yeah  plastic bags are pretty bad but people can do stuff to stop that unlike global warming.

Answer 6

Just another way to charge the average person on the street.

Answer 7

They are damaging as plastic does not biodegrade like cardboard and uses a lot of energy in production. That is why some major retail chains in the UK are trying to reduce their useage. Some comminites have or intend banning them.

Use or reuse (environmentally friendly) bags.

Answer 8

The plastic bags are a visible example of rubbish, we can see them and don't do anything, we can't see global warming, we can see the effects, but global warming causes more damage.

Answer 9

well i think it is why can't we all use paper bags there biodegradable and more friendly to the environment

Answer 10

it's more that they are a contributer to the detremental environmental effect our current lifestyles have

Answer 11

Plastic pollution is destroying the world's ocean ecosystems, but some companies are in a position to stop the devastation.

We have all seen those graphic photos depicting the fate of marine mammals tangled in discarded fishing nets. And the sight of a soft drinks bottle floating by while we are canoeing in our local lake or river of choice is not a rarity.

But the real problem with plastic pollution in the world's waters -- the fact that it never, ever, degrades -- is more or less invisible to the naked eye, and is more immediate than anyone thought. And some argue that companies have the potential to alleviate the crisis in a big way.

Stephan Becker, founder of Beautiful Oceans, a for-profit corporate framework that offers courses in marine conservation to scuba divers and snorkelers, is one of those people who believes the corporate world can have a tremendous impact on reducing plastic pollution.

According to Becker, who studies plastic pollution in oceans, the biggest problem concerning industry and plastic waste is that not enough is being done to ensure that products can be reintegrated into nature.

More than a Drop

Plastic is particularly damaging because it is not biodegradable, he says, and plastic particles, although invisible, remain unmoving in the water and eventually become part of the food chain.

In oceans, areas called gyres, which have strong currents facilitated by circular wind movement, pull in waste and become densely populated by a stagnant surplus of plastic. Becker says that in some gyres, there is five times more plastic than zooplankton. The plankton, he says, have plastic debris in their bodies, which means plastic has entered the food chain, since zooplankton are at the core of the marine food chain.

Unfortunately, that is not the worst of it.

Plastic is a bigger danger than global warming, or at least it is in the immediate sense, considering it is snuffing out the lowest common denominator in the food chain, says Neil Seldman, a waste recycling expert and president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance, an organisation with a long track record of promoting sustainable communities.

Seldman, like Becker, also sees potential for companies to ease the problem, both by creating public awareness of a not-so-highly-publicised issue and by greatly downsizing the use of plastic altogether.

His organisation, along with the Earth Resource Foundation, an environmental education non-profit, is campaigning for stores to stop using plastic bags at checkout counters and to instead hand out or sell reusable burlap or canvas bags.

So far, he says, companies have been extremely receptive to the idea.

Although most of the talks are still in the works and Seldman has not yet released the names of the companies involved with the campaign -- which is aptly titled "Zero Waste at the Checkout Counter" -- he says that one of the stores that recently implemented the policy has already reported saving thousands of dollars by eliminating its use of plastic bags.

Beyond the Checkout

Saving money through the alteration of plastic consumption is not limited to supermarkets and retailers through the elimination of plastic bags, according to Seldman. "There is a lot of money to be made in alternative plastics and in managing refillable reusables," he says.

Becker also says that companies are taking notice of the issue. For example, Daimler Chrysler and General Motors Canada are two of many companies that are part of a huge collaborative effort to create environmentally friendly cars in Canada.

The collaboration, known as the Auto21 project, was developed to research the possibility of the creation of a largely biodegradable vehicle.

Seldman says that although companies are making changes when they become aware of the plastic pollution crisis, the changes are not coming fast enough. Industry, he says, will have to make major alterations in the near future, both to keep up with the evolving and rapidly growing sustainable community and to pull the world's oceans out of a state of desperation.

www.greenbiz.com

Plastic bags that end up in landfills may take up to 1,000 years to break down. And plastic bags aren’t biodegradable. They actually go through a process called photodegradation—breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic particles that contaminate both soil and water, and end up entering the food chain when animals accidentally ingest them.

Plastic bags are made from petroleum. Producing plastic bags consumes millions of gallons of oil that could be used for fuel and heating.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 380 billion plastic bags are used in the United States every year and only about 1 percent to 3 percent are ever recycled.

Worldwide, people use nearly 1 trillion plastic bags every year. According to various estimates, Taiwan consumes 20 billion plastic bags annually (900 per person), Japan consumes 300 billion bags each year (300 per person), and Australia consumes 6.9 billion plastic bags annually (326 per person).

Plastic bags are so lightweight that they are easily blown into trees, roads and waterways. Plastic litter is now found everywhere on the planet—even in remote places such as Antarctica. In the Pacific Ocean, there is a floating morass of plastic garbage that is twice the size of Texas and growing daily.

Hundreds of thousands of whales, dolphins, sea turtles and other marine mammals die every year after eating discarded plastic bags they mistake for food.

environment.about.com

Answer 12

Having packed in the shopping I use the bags as bin liners. Very useful as do others in my area. I just cant get enough bags. I sometimes double up to increase my potential.LOL I couldn't be bothered saving the planet because Im not paid to do that job. I got my own job to worry about.

The environmental minister is just that mental!!!

Answer 13

Not so much  more damaging but all part of our utter contempt for the planet we inhabit.

Answer 14

No. Global warming/climate change is a disaster waiting to happen. Plastic bags are a menace and threaten wild life.

Answer 15

Well in a way they cause global warming. If not recycled then they add to the burning piles of rubbish, causing CO2 to be released= global warming.

Answer 16

There is no such thing as "Global Warming".The Earth is going through one of it's natural cycles. If Global Warming is real, why do I have 12' of snow in my yard? But, plastic bags are real.

Answer 17

First - I'm not a fan of plastic bags, but consider we do recycle much of our plastic. Manufacturing more would add to the more serious and immediate problem which is global warming.

Global warming is already having it's effect on the most poverty stricken people in the world. Only the oil companies benefit from it.

It is not a steady rise in temperature that is the problem, but the uneven nature of the effects of global warmimg will continue to precipitate more natural disasters: tsunamis, etc - note recent history - and an imbalance in various species of the ocean has already been noted, resulting in the growth of terrible poisonous slime that has been noticed even in Scotland...

and killer crabs ...see below... NO KIDDING

Answer 18

They are equall!!! they are both really bad

USE BAGS FOR LIFE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!