Time to ban free plastic bags!

Whilst in England we are still debating about the giving of a free plastic bag when you do your shopping in a supermarket, due to the impact on the environment.  In other countries, others have decided to protect our planet, by trying to reduce the amount of rubbish we are spreading in our everyday life without any respect for what it is around us.

Growing up in Corsica, I remembered 15 years ago when they decided to ban plastic bags and you had to come with your own bag or buy a reusable paper bag. Then the whole France took the same decision, and living in various countries, I can see things going the same way with shoppers in Germany, the Netherlands and in Belgium, having to pay for a plastic bag.

I was recently in the south of Spain and Playa del Ingles in Grand Canaria and whilst walking on the dunes and the beach of Playa del Ingles, a natural park for wild animals and birds and the sea, I was shocked at the amount of plastic bags, water bottles, beer cans, cigarette butts, which every smoker should know is not biodegradable and actually dangerous for.

In Spain as you can understand, plastic bags are free and smokers throw away their cigarettes with no respect for the environment.

An average person uses almost 200 bags a year. 200 bags! It could take 500 years in landfill sites to break them down if they make it there. Globally one trillion bags are used worldwide each year, think about those statistics, the next time you visit a supermarket, and the weight on the environment.

What can you do to save the planet! Ban the bag; it is not that hard a resolution to keep, use canvas bags and baskets instead. Teach your children, and set an example.

I remember being a child and living in France and watching my mum throw one little garbage bag away every week and I began to wonder if it was even possible to get down to one little tiny like bag like her. Now at home, I tell myself “waste nothing”, I use a composter for vegetable waste, as well when I am cooking and we sort out rubbish for recycling each week.  It does not take any longer when propely organised and it makes you feel good.

At the end of 2007, Greenpeace announced its day without plastic bag, why can’t some supermarket offer a canvas bag to their customer instead of thousands of plastic bags you see everywhere in Spain, at the beach and in the country side.

In Spain, each person uses an average of 238 plastic bags a year (about 100.000 tones of plastic waste!)

The French often complain to the Spanish authorities, especially at the border with the Basque country and the French Catalan counterpart due to the amount of rubbish and especially plastic bags (Spanish one) arriving on their coast with no control.

Think about the other devastating environmental effects, dolphins mistake them for jellyfish and quite often they’ll eat them causing severe damage, Turtles choke to death on them thinking it is food, about 100 000 birds, whales, seals and Turtles will suffocate from them every year.

Can’t you see them when you walk along the sea or in the forest! The world’s oceans are becoming a jet stream of western consumerism literally.

Spain is a bad example and has yet to understand the urgent need for the reduction of plastic bags.

So we all can do an effort, let’s go green, get everyone involved and together we can make a big difference for 2009! YES WE CAN!

Support Greenpeace:

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/