The-Accountant-Jul-Aug-2017

ENVIRONMENT
empty and for some foods. Some bags
are sealed for tamper-evident capability;
including some where the press-to-reseal
feature becomes accessible only when a
perforated outer seal is torn away. Boilin-bags
are often used for sealed frozen
foods, sometimes complete entrees. The
bags are usually tough heat-sealed nylon
or polyester to withstand the temperatures
of boiling water. Some bags are porous
or perforated to allow the hot water to
contact the food: rice, noodles, etc.
Because of environmental and litter
problems, some locations are working
toward a phase-out of lightweight plastic
bags.
Medical uses
Wikipedia further explains that plastic
bags are used for many medical purposes.
The non-porous quality of plastic film
means that they are useful for isolating
infectious body fluids; other porous
bags made of nonwoven plastics can be
sterilized by gas and maintain this sterility.
Bags can be made under regulated sterile
manufacturing conditions, so they can be
used when infection is a health risk. They
are lightweight and flexible, so they can be
carried by or laid next to patients without
making the patient as uncomfortable as a
heavy glass bottle would be. They are less
expensive than re-usable options, such as
glass bottles. Plastic bags and plastic wrap
are also used to prevent water loss and
hypothermia in very premature babies
When did we start using
plastic bags?
American and European patent
applications relating to the production
of plastic shopping bags can be found
dating back to the early 1950s, but these
refer to composite constructions with
handles fixed to the bag in a secondary
manufacturing process. The modern
lightweight shopping bag is the invention
of Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin.
The number of plastic bags used and
discarded worldwide has been estimated
to be on the order of 1 trillion annually.
The use of plastic bags differs dramatically
across countries. While the average
consumer in China uses only 2 or 3
plastic bags a year, the numbers are much
higher in most other countries: Denmark:
4, Ireland: 20, Germany: 65, USA: > 300,
Poland, Hungary, Slovakia: more than
400.
A large number of cities and counties
have banned the use of plastic bags by
grocery stores or introduced a minimum
charge. In September 2014, California
became the first state to pass a law
banning their use.
How Plastic bags affect
children
Thin conformable plastic bags, especially
dry cleaning bags, have the potential for
causing suffocation. About 25 children
in the United States suffocate each year
due to plastic bags, almost nine out of ten
of whom are under the age of one. This
has led to voluntary warning labels on
some bags which pose a hazard to small
children.
Non-compostable plastic bags can
take centuries to decompose In the 2000s,
many stores and companies began to use
different types of biodegradable bags to
comply with perceived environmental
benefits.
Plastic shopping bags which escape
the garbage collection process can end up
in streams, which then lead them to end
up in the open ocean. An estimated 300
million plastic bags end up in the ocean
due to escaping the garbage. The way in
which the bags float in open water can
resemble a jellyfish, posing significant
dangers to marine mammals and
Leatherback sea turtles, when they are
eaten by mistake and enter the animals’
digestive tracts.
Even though the bags are plastic, most
recycling plants do not recycle them. The
type of plastic in plastic bags makes it
difficult to be recycled into new material.
Additionally, the material frequently
causes the equipment used at recycling
plants to jam, thus having to pause the
recycle machinery and slow down daily
operations. (Wikipedia on phasing out
lightweight plastic bags).
Plastic shopping bags are in most
cases not accepted by standard curbside
recycling programs; though their
composition is often identical to other
accepted plastics, they pose problems for
the single-stream recycling, process, as
most of the sorting equipment is designed
for rigid plastics such as bottles, so plastic
bags often end up clogging wheels or
belts, or being confused as paper and
contaminating the pulp produced later in
the stream.
Some large store chains have banned
plastic shopping bags such as Whole
Foods in the U.S. and IKEA in the U.S.
and the U.K explains Wikipedia.
Concern has understandably been
expressed that among other issues, this
ban might lead to job losses at a time
when unemployment is a major concern.
However, if the views expressed by - The
National Environment Management
Authority (Nema) - Kenya are anything
to go by, Kenyans might soon have to
change the way they enfold and discard
staff; this ban will chiefly affect the issues
described in the second paragraph of this
feature.
Food for thought
How plastic bags affect our environment
The impact of plastic bags on the
environment is enormous. As of August
2010, between 500 billion and 1 trillion
plastic bags were being used each year
worldwide. Approximately 100,000 sea
turtles and other marine animals die
every year because they either mistake the
bags for food or get strangled in them,
says Natural Environment. In Australia,
50 million garbage bags end up as litter
yearly, and the “plastic soup” patch
floating in the Pacific Ocean is twice the
size of the continental United States. It is
roughly 80 percent plastic, according to-
The Independent, a British newspaper.
According to the Natural Environment
website, 60 to 100 million barrels of oil
are required to manufacture a year’s worth
of plastic bags worldwide, and it takes
approximately 400 years at least for a bag
to biodegrade.
Source; livestrong.com
48 JULY - AUGUST 2017