My city should enact an ordinance prohibiting businesses from Essay

My city should enact an ordinance prohibiting businesses from distributing plastic shopping bags with retail sales - Essay Example c. Environmental degradation This section will highlight how plastic paper bags contribute to environmental degradation and what can be done by authorities to reduce the effects of plastic bags on the environment. d. Dangers to human life. This section will discuss how plastic bags endanger human life. The section will also provide examples of situations whereby human life is endangered by plastic bags. e. Summary This part will give a summary of what is contained in the paper. The section will also give a few suggestions on how to end the hazards caused by plastic bags. f. Works Cited This section will list all the sources that were used and consulted during this research. Introduction Non biodegradable substances are used in the manufacture of plastic bags. Therefore, they do not decompose and are quite durable, during which time they separate into toxic particles which contaminate waterways and the soil. Plastics are large molecules that consist of units known as monomers. In plas tic bags, the units of monomers are known as ethylene. Plastic bags have been shown to pose a hazard to marine life, human life and contribute to environmental degradations. ... Manufacturing a new plastic shopping bag is cheaper than recycling, the reason why more and more bags are being manufactured as people shop. This increases dependency on foreign oil, which is used in the manufacture of plastic bags. Natural resources are depleted as the earth is extracted and destroyed in order to mine oil to manufacture plastic bags that are used, on average, for 10 minutes then dumped. Traditionally, plastic bags are made from polyethylene. Polyethylene is in turn, made up of monomer ethylene chains derived from petroleum and natural gas. Petroleum and natural gases are non renewable natural resources. Therefore, their products are getting costlier or diminishing every day with increased mining (Stillwell 63). Petroleum and natural gases are vital for everyday lifestyles as they are used in lighting, heating, transport and as raw materials in factories. With the current circumstances without a viable option for energy sources, petroleum and natural gas supplies sho uld be controlled to avoid a situation where industries would grind to a halt. It has been documented that the number of barrels of oil used globally are between 60 to 100 million annually in the manufacture of plastic bags (Stillwell 63). This oil could be put to better use. Therefore, what was a short-lived convenience for shoppers soon becomes an ecological hazard to all in habitants of the earth. Hazards Faced by Marine Life Due to Plastic Bags More than one million marine reptiles, birds and mammals succumb to plastic bag-related deaths each year (Brown 1). Some get entangled in them, losing limbs or life, while others ingest them. Sea turtles, for instance, consume plenty of jelly fish in their