REAL Costs of plastic bags

Although Singapore incinerates our plastic bags alongside with other garbage, the production of plastic bags is still a strain on resources. It is estimated that the energy consumed in the life cycle of a plastic bag is equivalent to 13.8 millimeters of crude oil, about a tablespoonful. With that, Singapore has to refine 216,998 barrels of crude oil every year to make plastics for packaging.

The main material involved in the production is petroleum which is non-renewable. Furthermore, the chemicals involved in the production contributed to pollution during the manufacturing processing. The energy that is used to produce and transport the finished articles not only eats up more resources, but also contributes to global warming.

Moving on to the part where we take the plastic bags 'free' from the retailers. Annual cost to US retailers alone for plastic bags is estimated at $4 billion, and eventually this cost is passed on to the consumers. If we reduce the numbers of plastic bags, even stop using it totally, the retailers would have no reason to buy that many plastic bags and this passing on of costs would be eliminated.

The next stage would involve us throwing away the plastic bags after using them. Whatever the destination of these discarded plastic bags, there are harmful effects to the environment. The sight of plastic bags floating on the surface of the seas is not uncommon when you are at the beach. These plastic bags are the causes of death to hundreds of thousands of turtles and marine creatures which ate them thinking that they are food. If the plastic bags are not ingested immediately, a decomposing one would pose a even bigger threat.

When plastic bags decompose, small plastic particles can pose threats to marine life and contaminate the food web. A 2001 paper by Japanese researchers reported that plastic debris acts like a sponge for toxic chemicals, soaking up a million fold greater concentration of such deadly compounds as PCBs and DDE (a breakdown product of the notorious insecticide DDT), than the surrounding seawater. These turn into toxic gut bombs for marine animals which frequently mistake these bits for food.

Recycling is a good solution to this problem by collecting the plastic bags turning them into other useful objects but during the process of recycling, energy is consumed, energy that could have been saved and left for future generations. Furthermore, only an extremely small portion of plastic bags is recycled worldwide around 1-3%.

In short, a reduction in the consumption would be the best solution to our problems.