Throughout the entire world we are so dependent on the use and production of plastic. Plastic in a major part of our everyday items and products but when it comes to recycling them we don’t do a very good job at it. Specifically, plastic bags are one of the top issues with killing animals in the oceans and on land. It is also one of the top waste products to not be recycled. In order to save our planet and the environment, the production of plastic bags in large cities should be banned. I have personal experience in dealing with plastic bags and knowing how much people waste them. I have worked under the TJX Company at Marshalls for three years and we hand out plastic bags like candy. We do not bother to try and squeeze things in or try to save space. People will also come back with returned items and we are to throw away the bag they used. We do sell reusable bags but not all people bring them back. Most importantly the reason I am writing about this issue is that I am a human being and people are destroying the planet we live on with the amount of waste and litter we are producing. I also go shopping and see the amount of bags being wasted. Throughout this essay I will provide evidence from multiple authors to show why this should be implemented as well as what concerns are being expressing

In the first article I read, “Should Cities Ban Plastic Bags” by Daniella Dimitrova she talks about how plastic bags are bad for the environment and economically, but she also talks about how it would be so much work to put everything together to get rid of plastic bags. “They either drown in plastic bags or spend millions of dollars to clean up the mess.”( Dimitrova 1)  Dimitrova states that the results of take-back programs or other programs to increase recycling bags have a very small amount of success. An effective strategy that has been put in place in Washington D.C. and Ireland is a market based one. They charge for plastic bags, but in some places the laws prevent these places from being able to charge for a bag like in California. The argument throughout the rest of the article is about the effects the plastic bags have on the environment. Questions are being asked like “Why should we focus on plastic bag waste,” and this is because the plastic bag pollution is so much more enormous and kills so much more than other waste and this is what makes them the bigger issue. (Dimitrova 1) Another problem with trying to get rid of plastic bags is that for the private businesses that use this product banning them is a government invasion. 

The article “Why Carry Out Bag Fees Are More Effective Than Plastic Bag Bans” by Jennie Romer creates the argument about how by charging a fee to a plastic bag is likely to work better than banning the plastic bags all together. In the past when places have banned plastic bags stores will find their way away around the issue to better their store and to keep the customers happy. For example, Walmart stores in Chicago and Hawaii had banned plastic bags, but then switched to creating thicker bags (2.25 mils) to have the bag be labeled as a reusable bag. The Grocer’s Industry and the Plastics Industry have to different views about this (Romer 1). The Plastics Industry has been trying to create laws to prevent people from being able to ban plastic bags and have always threatened to sue. One of their better and most popular argument about this is that what happens when we ban plastic bags? People will use paper bags which are thicker and the outcome could possibly be worse than when plastic bags were being used. In the Grocer’s Industry their arguments for not wanting to ban plastic bags is all about the cost. Paper bags costs 8-10 cents which plastic bags only cost 1-3 cents (Romer 1). Since stores would not be charging for the paper bags this cuts into the grocer’s profit because they are providing the more expensive option (paper) for free. The most effective way of decreasing plastic bags usage is this hybrid method of banning plastic bags and adding a 10 cent fee to paper and all other reusable bags. “These new ban/fee hybrids were deemed second generation bans and they were much more effective: overall single-use bag consumption decreased” (Romer 1). It comes down the fact that when the customer is asked the question of purchasing a bag along with their items the answer turns out to be no. 

The article “The Bag Bill” by Ian Frazier is written in the way of how Frazier met Jennie Romer, a woman who has been trying to go against the systems and influence bans or fees for plastic bags and who also wrote the article I talked about above. There is a bill that has been waiting to pass in New York City since 2014 on putting a charge of five cents toward plastic bags (Frazier 1). The shocking thing here is that this was in 2014 and their fast reaction of saying no to this was appalling. Taking it back into consideration it is still being looked into over the past three years and Romer’s hope of New York’s agreement to the law is just a matter of time. Romer explained in one of her speeches that putting a fee on the bag or banning them gives the customer the option to really think about purchasing the bag and if they truly need the bag. Another good thing about fees is that it is easier to defend against legal issues (Frazier 1). The way Frazier talks about Romer and her intention of bringing this issue to the eyes of the consumers continues and talks about how these big corporations for plastic bags try to take her and her little corporation down.

In this article, “Should Plastic Bags Be Banned”, by Kate Galbraith, she talks about how places around the world already have bans or taxes on plastic bags such as Mexico City, Ireland, and China. Also, in San Francisco they expanded a ban on the use of plastic bags but also a 10 cent fee for each paper bag they use. Kate does a great way on providing both views of the story on whether we should ban them or if we shouldn’t (Galbraith 1). In the article she quotes the spokesperson for Plastics Europe and how plastic bags are a good way to and cheap way of carrying things around but the problems stands where people are irresponsible with them and lack the knowledge of what they are doing to the environment. The question is why are they allowed to be doing this in other places around the world why can we not just implement these taxes all over the US? 

 In the book “The Ethics of Waste”, by Gay Hawkins, he talks legitimately about the ethics of waste. He   thinks of waste not only just as “rubbish” or “trash” but that the term waste has a deeper meaning and effect on us. He connects a habitat as a certain place that contains “dwelling or position”. Within the habitat you create feelings and emotions and this is what creates a mode of being, as well as helping structure social behavior. “Through habits we manage the circulation of objects into and out of our lives and reestablish the boundaries of the self, and this is how the cultivation of particular habits of waste removal becomes the cultivation of a particular self” (pg 25). With the combination of convenience and purification these ideas created our ethical justifications towards the “norm” or in this case the habits that these disposable products commanded from us. “These changes in how objects are apprehended are not simply psychological, they are connected to the profound institutional changes that rapidly developing  consumer culture inaugurated” (pg 28) Within the chapter Hawkins uses a television commercial by the New South Wales Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) about a man washing his car with soap and all of the water running into the environment and polluting it as well as after he washes the car he dives into a river and emerges with a plastic bag on him and he dusts it off. He also uses Hollywood movie American Beauty where there is a scene that provides an extended video of a plastic bag blowing around in a strong wind. He uses, Waste and Want, by Susan Strasser. Within the prologue Hawkins gives a very  descriptive story of his past and what compels him to write this book. He brings into example his personal experiences with waste and stories his friends, family, and colleagues have shared with him about their experiences with it. Hawkins includes, “My point is not to defend plastic bags but to make a plea for a much maligned object. It is simply to acknowledge the variety of relations we have with them in order to show that their status as rubbish is not fixed.” (pg 23) He talks about how much he despises plastics bags but he also explains that sometimes he feels bad for them.

Charles Moore from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation discovered the endless floating waste ofplastic trash now called “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. He is an oceanographer and he is the captain of the Alguita vessel that collects information of the plastic waste that litters our ocean. Moore also wrote a book called “Plastic Ocean” in 2012. Moore starts off his Ted Talk by answering the question “Why plastics recycling simple?” “It melts below the boiling point of water and does not dry off the oily contaminants” he describes and explains that over half of the 100 billion pounds of trash will overflow into the seas. Moore shows many pictures of hundreds of pounds of trash washed up on islands and beaches as well as floating in patches across the seas. Moore explains how they have found and dissected dead sea birds with bottle caps and other plastic materials contained in their digestive system.

He explains throughout his Ted Talk that they would drag plankton nets across the water for a few miles and what they collected where not clear dishes of water with plankton but it also contained more plastic than it did plankton. ‘The throwaway society can’t be contained and it has gone global. Now the market can do a lot for us but it can’t fix the natural system in the ocean we have broken…The solution is to stop the plastic at its source, stop it on land before it reaches the ocean and in a plastic wrap and packaged  world he doesn’t hold out much hope for that either.” With Moore’s claims there is evidence to show that  plastic bag production needs to come to an end. Throughout the article “Report on Plastic Bag Restrictions Environment and Energy Commission” the author confronts all recycling and banning issues on plastic bags. He talks about partial bans, full bans, fees on plastic bags and not paper, fees on all bags, and so much more. The two types of solutions I am going to be focusing on is a plastic bag fee, and a plastic bag ban with a fee of paper bags. First, a plastic bag fee, the author explains how giving a fee will not be entirely helpful because this won’t be a good enough incentive for customers to cease using plastic bags. The author points out that we already have a system like this, for bringing bag plastic bags and getting money back for them, yet no one truly does this. Soon with the fee customers will become accustomed to the charge and then the plastic bag consumption will rise back up to what it was before.

With the plastic bag ban and then a fee of paper bags will have the most prominent effect on the environment. With the fee on the paper bags this will give customers an incentive to switch to reusable bags in order to save money the disadvantages to this would be “Compostable bags still have significant environmental negatives.” He doesn’t provide one solution but looks at all of the solutions he can think of and combinations of some to figure out what the best outcome would be for us to start talking action.

The production and waste of plastic bags is becoming harmful and detrimental to our planet. We need to act now in order to save our planet from being mistreated and potentially killing thousands of species and in the process of hurting us. The conversations and positions I have read throughout these articles all are a little different from one another. I can conclude that we should slow down production and put taxes on plastic bags. We are killing the environment everyday not only with just plastic bafs but many other products as well. Plastic bags are a large percentage of waste and something we can all do to fix. Throughout the TedTalk video you see how damaging we are to the environment and well as the animals that live in it. In the “Ethics of Waste” chapter by Gay Hawkins he provides evidence from many sources but he explains how the plastic bag is something we lived without and that when it was created we became accustomed to it and find no problem with throwing them away so why not just go back to not having plastic bags. Kate from the New York Times articles provides evidence with the facts of how taxes are already being put on plastic bags and how the outcome of that has decreased the amount of plastic bags being taken home by customers. For these reasons and examples along with many others the plastic bag production should decreased the amount of bags it is creating or even better come to a halt. Implementing a tax would decrease the amount of bags consumed or even better leading to a world with no plastic bags. 
