Turtle Eating a Plastic Bag
Let's talk
about plastic bags. It's something that everybody uses but it's time that we
stop using them now.
It's
estimated that the world uses 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags a year. In
the US
alone, they estimate that it takes 12,000,000 million barrels of oil are
required to produce the 100 billion plastic bags used each year. (Source: reusablebags.com)
When I used
to work at a major outdoor store in Toronto,
I was constantly amazed the large numbers of people who requested bags to carry
home their freshly purchased knapsack. What's with that? They looked at me like
I had two heads when I suggested that they just put it on their back...
It's super
important that we start to educate our students about making sure they don't
allow plastic bags to get into our waterways. Two articles showed up in the
press today about animals ingesting plastic bags and dying slow horrible deaths.
Here is one on a giant turtle in Australia
and another one about 2 pounds of plastic bags found in a minke whale found dead in
the UK.
For those
who missed it a couple of months ago, we posted a piece about the so-called,
Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It's an area twice the size of Texas that is completely filled with around 3
million tons of floating pieces of plastic.
More info and teaching resources: Plastics in our Oceans and Waterways
Turtle Eating a Plastic Bag
Let's talk
about plastic bags. It's something that everybody uses but it's time that we
stop using them now.
It's
estimated that the world uses 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags a year. In
the US
alone, they estimate that it takes 12,000,000 million barrels of oil are
required to produce the 100 billion plastic bags used each year. (Source: reusablebags.com)
When I used
to work at a major outdoor store in Toronto,
I was constantly amazed the large numbers of people who requested bags to carry
home their freshly purchased knapsack. What's with that? They looked at me like
I had two heads when I suggested that they just put it on their back...
It's super
important that we start to educate our students about making sure they don't
allow plastic bags to get into our waterways. Two articles showed up in the
press today about animals ingesting plastic bags and dying slow horrible deaths.
Here is one on a giant turtle in Australia
and another one about 2 pounds of plastic bags found in a minke whale found dead in
the UK.
For those
who missed it a couple of months ago, we posted a piece about the so-called,
Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It's an area twice the size of Texas that is completely filled with around 3
million tons of floating pieces of plastic.
More info and teaching resources: Plastics in our Oceans and Waterways
David H. Johnston
