From utility to environmental hazard…, plastic bags.

To reduce the use of single-use plastic bags and encourage their responsible consumption is that, internationally, every  July 3rd is celebrated the Plastic Bag Free Day.

In a very short time, less than a century, modern man made the change from the wicker basket or the cloth soap made by our grandmothers to plastic bags, to the point of consuming more than 200 plastic bags per year per person.

The global figure of around 500 billion plastic bags that are used once and then discarded is a true reflection of the fact that these objects have become one of the most common and, why not, even essential, in our daily lives.

Anyone who doubts this should look carefully at their home or work environment, the streets of urban neighborhoods or rural communities, the commercial and recreational areas they visit, and even the land dedicated to agricultural and livestock activities, and there they can be seen, with specific uses or as part of the accumulations of poorly managed garbage.

This is how they reach the storm drainage systems and, in addition to obstructing them, cause serious inconveniences during floods in the rainy season.

Another destination is rivers and seas, where they cause serious damage to the flora and fauna of these ecosystems. An example of this is the death of turtles, fish and waterfowl, which mistake plastic bags for food or get entangled in them. This can cause them to suffocate or become unable to swim.

But the danger of plastic bags on Earth surpasses even the life span of any human being, since it is estimated that a plastic bag can take more than 150 years to decompose.

A decomposition that does not mean the total disappearance, but the fragmentation into microplastics that can persist another hundred years floating in the air we breathe or in the water where fish and shellfish that feed us live. This is the reason why plastic bags entered the food chain.

Incredibly, this object invented by Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin to protect the environment by avoiding the continuous felling of millions of trees that were used as raw material to manufacture paper bags, is today a threat to the health of the planet.

In order to reduce the use of single-use plastic bags and encourage their responsible consumption due to the damage they cause to the environment, Plastic Bag Free Day is celebrated internationally every July 3rd, with programs that call for not leaving home without a cloth bag in our wallet for any unexpected or unplanned purchase we make.

Cleaning up coastal-marine ecosystems and residential areas, as well as reusing the bags we have at home, is a smart move. We cannot forget that plastic resins are petroleum derivatives and the convenience of using and throwing away cannot win over ecological awareness.

Written by Ana González Goicochea.