Introduction
People use plastic bags to carry items like food and clothes, which are bought from shops. Plastic bags are commonly used, even though we know they can damage the environment. For urban solid waste, plastic bags have become major items in the litter system. This has resulted in many detrimental environmental effects including animal choking, pollution, blockage of channels, rivers and streams, and landscape disfigurement. As a result of these effects, the public at large, activists and legislatures have voiced outrage to the degree that some national governments have banned the use of plastic bags for shopping.
There are many root causes to attribute the problem of plastic bag waste in Nigeria and other countries. South Africa, for example, has restricted the manufacture and usage of plastic bags by enacting parliamentary legislation. Several European countries have adopted a fee for plastic bags, taking into account the negative effect of plastic bags on agricultural production. The Japanese government has also levied a plastic bag fee to limit production and use (Md-Jalil et al., 2013). Prohibitions on the use of plastic bags and the development of alternatives are a most welcome step when compared to putting pressure on people’s production and use of plastic bags. Even though charging a levy on plastic bags has a positive effect on protecting and preserving the fertility of agricultural land, the resulting continued and dominant use of plastic bags itself would negate the benefits or advantages of the levy.
Impact on the environment
The major impact of plastic bags on the environment is that it takes many years to for them to decompose. In addition, toxic substances are released into the soil when plastic bags perish under sunlight and, if plastic bags are burned, they release a toxic substance into the air causing ambient air pollution. Simons (2005) suggests that, owing to the unregulated accumulation of carcinogenic compounds, the use of plastic bags may allow inroads into cancerous diseases. Plastic bags are dumped indiscriminately into landfills worldwide that occupy tons of hectares of land and emit dangerous methane and carbon dioxide gases as well as highly toxic leachates from these landfills during their decomposition stage.
Waste from plastic bags poses serious environmental danger to human and animal health. If plastic bags are not properly disposed of, they can impact the environment by causing littering and stormwater drain blockages.
Animals may also get tangled and drown in plastic bags. Animals often confuse the bags for food and consume them, therefore blocking their digestive processes. Animals becoming entanglement in marine debris, including plastic bags, may cause starvation, choking, laceration, infection, reduced reproductive success, and mortality (Katsanevakis, 2008). There were instances where large endangered tortoises were found to have suffocated because of the mistaken swallowing of plastic bags combined with seaweed (Thiel et al, 2003).
Plastics are now omnipresent in the marine environment and this worsening trend needs urgent action. Plastics have been identified as a problem in the marine environment since the 1970s, but the issue of plastic pollution in marine and freshwater environments has only recently been identified as a global problem. As a consequence, marine plastic bag pollution has become noteworthy environmental concern for governments, scientists, non-governmental establishments, and the international community (Carpenter and Smith, 1972)....ReadMore