Would You Like To Help Reduce The Horrific Plastic Bag Problems, But Don’t Even Know Where To Start?

Here’s a way that you can take action in the next 5 minutes - and here’s why we all need to take action to help prevent this horrifying type of story!
There is a floating island of plastic garbage, twice the size of Texas, caught in a current gyro between USA and Hawaii. The huge area is filled with plastic which never shows up on satellite.
The huge area of gunk was found by someone who sailed into it by mistake as he was returning from a yacht race. The enormous stew of plastic garbage weighs over three million tons and grows tenfold every decade.

It is so dangerous for wildlife. Sea turtles mistake clear plastic bags for jellyfish, and eat them. Birds swallow shards of plastic. More than a million sea birds, 100,000 marine mammals and countless fish die each year either from eating the junk or becoming ensnared in it and drowning. Any sort of cleanup operation is virtually impossible as some plastic bottle disintegrate into particles as fine as dust, and the larger pieces become entangled with derelict fishing nets and waterlogged tyres.

There is a major dispute as to who will clean up this mess as it currently lies about a thousand miles west of California and a thousand miles north of the Hawaiian Islands. Any nation that embarks on the cleanup automatically admits that it is responsible, so they won’t acknowledge it……
That story is horrifying enough. However, a vast swirling mass of plastic bags and rubbish has now been discovered in the Atlantic too!
The floating garbage heap – which contains debris blown off the coast of Britain and carried by currents - is a smaller version of the huge plastic island above. Marine researchers who made the discovery say that every ocean is now contaminated in plastic waste. (The findings come from the Greenpeace ship Esperanza)
Now ask yourself a question.
Who put it there in the first place? Who helped to create these massive islands of garbage, that are destroying so much of our environment?
People like you and I, unfortunately. Over the last 50 years, our generation has created this gigantic problem.
And, our generation can now start to eradicate the problem. All we need to do is carry on doing what we are doing, with a slight difference. Instead of using plastic bags, we can switch to TOTALLY degradable bags. Instead of your plastic bags lying around for 1000 years, they will disappear in just a few months……
Buy yours now online: tinyurl.com/o9wnvw –  East Devon’s Independent  Wikaniko Distributor - or email: lin@wikaniko.co.uk
See our feature in the Exmouth Journal - GO GREEN FEATURE (Thursday 8 October 2009)

I never take plastic bags now. If I forget to take my hessian bag out with me, I put things in my handbag or carry them out under my arms. I agree, hessian bags are the way forward. What is the 'rule 7' of the house rules, though? It's not as if Wikaniko hasn't also put up a good story about the mess plastic bags are creating in the sea. I had no idea about this. How did they all end up in the same part of the sea, though? I'm curious?! Of course, shops could just be forced to not offer plastic bags?!! Just as they could make smoking illegal... and save us from having to walk through groups of people standing outside, polluting our fresh air...

JohnJ
Obviously degradeable plastic bags are infinitely preferable to the ordinary kind but I'm wondering what they're made from (oil?) and how much non-renewable energy goes into making them. Are chemicals released as the bags degrade?
Rockwell
The house rules are at the bottom of the page. Rule 7 is about not using the site for commercial purposes. The problem with promoting businesses on the site is that if the site gets cluttered up with business promotions it may deter people from using the site as a genuine forum for local issues. I noticed today someone advertising a taxi service. Not sure whether that is advertising they've paid for or just a post.

I make recycled jewellery and crafts and during my research I got chatting to the guy who runs one of the biggest plastic recyling companies in the UK Smile Plastics. They take all kinds of plastic waste and turn it into sheets which are in turn used in industry and by a lot of furniture makers etc... He said that biodegradeable bags are causing them a huge problem, because they get collected along with normal plastic bags and go into the processing all together. The main end product from the plastic bags he gets is used for damp proofing membrane for the building industry and they are concerned that the element of biodegradeable bags in the may be causing the membrane to breakdown quicker, if this becomes a problem then this building product will end up being made from new plastic rather than recycled plastic, so he thinks in the long term they will cause more problems than they solve. Its interesting to see it from a different perpective. I collect bright plastic bags and make things, so if you've got any you dont want.....