By: Eric Zheng

Plastic bags are an important part of our everyday lives. We use them for shopping, as garbage bags, etc. But have you ever thought about what happens once they go to waste? They cause floods, deaths, etc.! Many areas have already banned plastic bags because of how deadly they are. Did you know that you might have been chewing on small bits of plastic? Yuck!

I strongly believe plastic bags should be banned, for the good of the environment and public health.

One reason why I think plastic bags should be banned is because plastic bags are easy to litter. They are covering the Earth! You see them everywhere; the roads, the streets, on trees and floating around, and they are polluting our environment. Plastic bags can also make global warming happen, because when breaking down, the plastic bags release a lot of greenhouse gases called Ethylene and Methane, which contribute to global warming. The more often global warming happens, the more floods will occur and have a major impact on humans and animals. Plastic bags can also clog drains. We need drains to prevent heavy storms from causing floods, so having plastic bags can lead to many destructions.

Plastic bags are also very toxic. From research, plastic bags are made from 70% estrogen-like substances. Estrogens are toxic chemicals that appear in almost anywhere, including plastic bags. A human body might contain estrogen because we are eating animals that that mistake plastic bags as food. Plastic bags are also injurious to wildlife, because they are getting killed from eating them or by getting strangled by them.

A lot of materials are being used to make plastic bags. One of the materials used to make plastic bags are fossil fuels. These materials are costly, and are nonrenewable. When people use plastic bags excessively, they are wasting something very valuable.

Others say that plastic bags are useful to them. However, they don’t think about the pollution plastic bags cause! Although plastic bags are useful, there are also other reusable bags like leather bags, and canvas bags that can replace plastic bags. They can also use plastic bags wisely by reusing them and not throwing them away! This can help improve the use of plastic bags.

In conclusion, these are my reasons why I strongly believe plastic bags should be banned: one reason is because it pollutes the environment, the second reason being because it is dangerous to humans and animals, the last reason being using a lot of materials. I suggest you guys don’t use plastic bags because there will be many benefits when you do so.