Plastic Bag Recycling: It’s Time to Take Responsibility

While plastic carrier bag manufacturers routinely receive flak from environmental activists from all over the globe, the truth is the solution to the problem is already in place. Plastic recycling is a simple and efficient way of reducing waste. As responsible consumers, we need to take a step to ensure all our plastic waste end up in a recycling centre and not a landfill. In fact, it takes mere seconds to locate a local recycling centre on Google Maps. There are even dedicated apps that allow you to find the nearest recycling centre. If that wasn’t enough, there are plastic recycling firms that pick up your plastic waste from your doorstep, and some of them even pay you for your plastic garbage. Following is a simple 3-step process to ensure all your household plastic wastes are properly recycled.

3 Simple Steps to Recycle Plastic Carrier Bags

Following are three simple steps to ensure the grocery bags you bring home do not end up in landfills.

Clean: Once you bring home a bag of groceries from the store. You need to empty the bag and make sure it doesn’t contain any debris.

Collect: Designate a plastic bag or a container to store all the plastic bags you collect over a period.

Contact: Contact a recycling centre to collect all the bags from your doorstep. You can even drop them off yourself.

Why is Banning Plastic Bags Not a Practical Solution?

Banning plastic bags is much like asking people to stop using their cars or air conditioners. The sheer convenience of a plastic carrier bag is what drives people to use them in the first place. Simply banning plastic carrier bags without offering an alternative is a half-baked solution that would fail to generate any positive result. A much more viable solution is to create a plastic disposal system that would prevent plastic bags from ending up in the oceans and landfills. It’s also important to keep in mind that all industrial manufacturing causes environmental pollution. Even the manufacturing plant of Tesla vehicles has a significant carbon footprint. While electric vehicles themselves do not cause air pollution, they often use electricity generated from thermal power plants, which cause air pollution. Something to think about. This is why instead of stopping the manufacturing process, it’s always best to look for solutions that make the existing technology more efficient and clean.

The Way Forward

Plastic bags today are more environmentally friendly than it was a couple of decades ago. Manufacturers and scientists are already invested in making biodegradable plastic bags that use a minimal amount of polyethene. Banning plastic bags would halt these scientific strides. For now, the best solution is to spread awareness about plastic bag disposal and create a city-wide collection system that ensures household plastic wastes end up in recycling plants. We already have successful disposal systems that do the same for other items. Disposed car worldwide ends up in local junkyards and they are compacted and prepared for recycling. If we can recycle cars, then we can certainly do the same with plastic.