Examine Two Ways in Which Plastic Bags Contribute to Environmental Damage

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Plastic bags are the common part of our life today. They were developed around 54 years ago to help people to do such simple things as carrying products from the market or shop, packing anything for the not very long trips and others. Current economy system heavily relies on consumption and consumers need to carry their goods using cheap and easy packaging, and that’s why there are between 500 billion and 1 trillion (Lowy, 20 July 2004) plastic bags being produced each year worldwide. Thus, nowadays plastic bags are a real problem not only for our environment, but for everyone living on our planet. They can cause an extremely big damage to nature, animals and even people. In this essay I would like to describe two the most harmful ways plastic bags affect our planet: toxic damage to the soil and animals harm. Talking about how plastic bags can affect our environment there is no way to judge problems separately. Because almost any plastic bag problem can influence not only one thing, but another part of the environment too. For example, throwing plastic bags on the ground harms not only soils, but animals which think that plastic bag is food. Moreover, these problems are the most needed to be solved by human. The point is that plastic bag was made from xylene, ethylene oxide and benzene, which are extremely toxic chemicals. When people throw bags on the ground, these toxins soak into the ground and harm plants. Moreover, it takes around 500-1000 years (Lapidos, 2007) to biodegrade for common plastic bag. Also, some people think, plastic bags can be easily decomposed by burning it. But there is no truth in these words. When you try to decompose bag by burning it, there are a lot of toxins being produced during the process, and these toxins do a great harm not only to air which people and animals breathe, as well for Earth’s ozone layer, when there are more and more

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