Where In The World Is Malialani: The War on Plastic

Plastic. It's become so absolutely vital to our everyday living that what we did before it seems an absolute mystery. Maybe you're thinking to yourself, "No, I don't use all that much plastic!" You're kidding yourself. From your car to your computer to your Ikea furniture to your packaged food, none of us can claim to be free from it. But we did live before it... somehow.

You might think that you recycle most of your plastic, but less than 7% of the plastic consumed in a year is recycled. And often times the plastic in your recycle bin is melted down into textiles, furniture, and other non-recyclable types of plastics. Now, I'm not asking you to break up with plastic. Even with all my hypocritical ethics, I must admit that it would be difficult. I guiltily love our iMac and our little Honda Fit and having a refrigerator... but that doesn't mean that we have to do nothing.

Plastic bags. They're everywhere. Our groceries, our clothes, our fruit, our garbage - it's difficult to know what we carried things in prior to our precious plastic. 500 billion bags are used world wide every year, 100 billion of those in the United States. We use them so often and readily that we hardly consider where they come from or their cost (financially or environmentally). You will rarely hear your cashier ask you "Paper or plastic" any more and many clothing boutiques don't even have a paper option - those who do typically come with plastic handles for your convenience. Oh hey there, Western plastic addiction!

Plastic bags aren't free, at $0.03 to create each thin grocery bag (several cents more depending on your other shopping stops) plus another $0.17 in "recycle and waste charges" per bag? You are paying about $0.20 a bag, the cost neatly tucked away in the total cost of your consumer goods. But, I mean, $0.20 a bag isn't thievery - until you realize those reusable bags are $0.99 one time. Or free if you have a friend (mother) who hoards them in their coat closet and would love to let you have a few! Or you could make your own, also free. Seriously: you just take an old t-shirt, cut the sleeves, sew the arm and neck holes shut and use the cut off sleeves to make a handle. Easiest thing in the world. Or Google more options to DIY - there are a million out there.

But we can recycle plastic bags, right? Well, kind of. There are those huge bins in the lobbies of grocery stores that claim to be recycle bins, but the truth is that many companies end up paying landfills to take them because recycling is so expensive. And even those are only the small percentage that people return to the bins. Less than %5 of plastic bags are recycled each year. They one of the top pollutants because of their light weight and flexibility, known as "urban tumbleweeds." They are in the top twelve trash items found along coastlines and garbage in the ocean and take over 300 years to photodegrade despite their thin nature. Not to mention the countless animals that are killed each year from swallowing, suffocating, or getting caught in plastic bags.

The key ingredient to any good plastic is polyethylene, the thermoplastic derived from oil. The creation of plastic contributes to the rising prices in foreign oil and you pay for that with your taxes, so the truth is that we pay a lot more than $0.20 a bag. Other countries seem to have caught on to the upset as plastic bags are banned in Bangladesh and Rwanda and have ban proposals in Israel, Canada, India, Kenya, Tanzania, Taiwan, and Singapore. They are taxed Ireland and China. There are several cities in the US that have bans, but most seem to flip-flop on the issue regularly.

Biodegradable plastic bags are becoming trendy, especially in your local produce section, but the truth on that front is that they often cost three to four times more than your regular plastic bag and still take three or more years to photodegrade. Biodegradable plastic also releases large amounts of green house gases as it breaks down because it is made from more "natural" fibers. And the research on biodegradable plastic seems to be constantly shifting it's perspective as it is still a young invention. It is obviously a superior choice to regular plastic, but whether they are merely creating a separate problem remains to be seen.

So here is my challenge to you: From ziplock to grocery to garbage - stop the plastic bag madness. Help our environment, lower consumer cost, and be a little responsible for our world weakening the rather disturbing hold plastic holds over our lives. Use reusable bags when shopping, use glass tupperware, purchase groceries that are without so much of the plastic packaging, buy "green" garbage bags (Bio Bag, Seventh Generation, Pridegreen, etc.), grab the biodegradable bags in the produce section, do even one of these things. We are irresponsibly filling up our world with waste when we have been commanded to care for it. Let Wall-E and The Lorax be stories, not our future.