banbags

Factsheet - The Bill - Supporters - Get Involved

Plastic bags cost society a lot more than the price retailers are currently paying to provide them. Simple alternatives such as reusable shopping bags and biodegradable single use shopping bags are available and already used in many stores throughout Massachusetts.

What’s wrong with plastic bags?

Plastic bags choke, strangle, and entangle turtles, whales, seals, birds, and fish, many of whom mistaken plastic bags as food. Some of these animals are already threatened due to issues such as over fishing or habitat loss. These animals suffer a painful death, the plastic wraps around their intestines or they choke to death.

Inadvertent Litter: They're so aerodynamic that even when properly disposed of, they can still blow away and become litter. They easily escape from the garbage truck, landfill, boat, and average consumer’s hands - and then carried by the wind into forests, ponds, rivers and lakes, and eventually into the ocean.

Plastic bags take between 200+ years to degrade. Every time we use a plastic bag, we’re leaving behind a small legacy of waste for future generations. As polyethylene breaks down, toxic substances leach into the soil and enter the food chain.

Only 5.2% of plastic bags are recycled. But even if the recycling rate were doubled, tripled, or quadrupled, the end result would still have an unacceptable negative impact on the threat they pose to wildlife.

A bill to ban plastic checkout bags in Massachusetts is now being considered. Tell your State Representative and State Senator that you want them to pass this important bill. eath. Click here to contact them with this quick action form.

Plastic Bag Facts

• Plastic bags are not biodegradable, and although they do degrade through mechanical action and photodegradation in the presence of light, these processes are slow taking an estimated 300 to 1000 years to occur. This process results in the bags being converted to smaller bits.

• Sea turtles and whales are especially prone to dying from ingestion of waterborne plastic bags since these objects are mistaken for some of their favorite foods (jellyfish and squid) and block their digestive tracks when swallowed.

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