Plastic Bags Essay

465 Words2 Pages
It is estimated that 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed each year. Plastic are made from non-renewable natural resources such as crude oil, gas and coal. The 5.6 billion bags we used in Australia in 2004 could have driven a car approximately 644 billion km. Plastic bags have become a part of everyday life and have become so convenient that people have over looked the impacts that they have on the earth’s spheres. Plastic bags demonstrate how the four spheres are connected and are impacted by the production and disposal of plastic bags. Most plastic bags that are used in grocery stores are made from a by-product of oil refineries, polyethylene, which are small pellets that are melted down to form the bags themselves. We are extracting and destroying the Earth to use a plastic bag for 10 minutes The process of extracting oil releases hydrogen sulphide, methane, and nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere affecting people’s health around the oil facilities and are also contributing to climate change. In the United States an estimated 12 million barrels of oil are used to make plastic bags that they use as a country. Plastic bags are often made in locations where the environmental standards are low, which then creates the issue of transportation of the bags and release of hydrocarbons, a contributing factor to the greenhouse effect, into the atmosphere from the transportation trucks. The extraction of oil can also cause problems to the geosphere, changing the composition of the soils around it because of oil leaks or spills. After a plastic bag is made, it is used by the consumer and then thrown out, a process that has begun to create many problems within the biosphere. Around 80 million plastic shopping bags ends up as our litter in our environment each year./ It takes plastic bags up to 1000 years to break down and because they are light weight and
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