The plastic bags

They are our daily wrapping materials for our  products that we buy or even carry from home. By now you should have a clue of what am talking about. I am writing about miss polythene.

Whenever I visit the supermarket goods are packed by an attendant using a plastic bag popularly known as ‘juala’ as an after sale service. Most people  value these branded paper bags with names of their favorite one stop shop without getting concerned with environment impact over time.

polythene bags littered

  

But are these papers harmful to our environment? The answer is definitely yes. This is because these papers are non-biodegradable materials that result to pilling up over time forming heaps and heaps of trash.

Plastic bags are from the same source as all plastic: crude oil. Like everything else manufactured from this non-renewable resource, it has two major drawbacks: in the manufacturing process it emits considerable amounts of pollution, and the product is not biodegradable. 

As of August 2010, between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags are being used each year worldwide.

Approximately 100,000 sea turtles and other marine animals die every year because they mistake the bags for food or get strangled in them. More often livestock die due to swallowing of the same bags.

Thanks to Nairobi County government which now seeks to ban the use of plastic bags if the proposed Bill to regulate the use is enacted into Law.

These plastic bags should at least be kept in check in order not to knock our environment off balance.