Our Planet Versus Plastic Bags - A Tale of Two Cities
Source: https://citywatchla.com/index.php/climate/26306-our-planet-versus-plastic-bags-a-tale-of-two-cities
Author: Erika Schelby
With oceans, countries, populations, and governments inundated by a plague of plastic worldwide, it may be useful to focus on the single-use plastic bag choices made by two cities, in the same U.S. state, located at a distance of only 64 miles (104 km) from each other. Experiencing devastating floods in the summer of 1998, Bangladesh noted that thin plastic bags were clogging hundreds of storm drains and drainage systems during flooding, worsening the situation. This caused an estimated 80 percent of the flooding blockages in cities. So in 2002, Bangladesh implemented a ban on all plastic shopping bags in the nation, becoming the first country in the world to do so. Unfortunately, such prohibitions are not enough. Despite the fact that Bangladesh became the world’s first country to ban plastic bags, their use continued to cause environmental harm. Its Department of Environment confiscated 592,223 metric tons of polythene from 2019 to 2021. The number of illegal polybag manufacturers increased from 300 in 1999 to an estimated 700 to 1,000 by 2021. Instead of finding solutions to the issues related to plastic pollution, reports by Western nonprofits and companies have, meanwhile, helped push the blame for polluting the world’s oceans onto “a small geographical area in East and Southeast Asia.” Yet burning plastic discharges a potent and dangerous mix of toxins and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and into the communities unfortunate enough to be near the incinerating sites. Moreover, for a number of rich countries with environmental restrictions, the cynical hype for recycling has fostered the export of plastic trash to less developed countries like Bangladesh, resulting in the charge of “waste colonialism.”