Paper, Plastic, or Something Better?

The next time the clerk at your favorite grocery store asks whether you prefer “paper or plastic” for your purchases, consider giving the truly eco-friendly response and saying, “neither.”
Plastic bags end up as litter that fouls the landscape, and kill thousands of marine mammals every year that mistake the floating bags for food. Plastic bags that get buried in landfills may take up to 1,000 years to break down, and in the process they separate into smaller and smaller toxic particles that contaminate soil and water. Furthermore, the production of plastic bags consume millions of gallons of oil that could be used for fuel and heating.
Is Paper Better Than Plastic?
Paper bags, which many people consider a better alternative to plastic bags, carry their own set of environmental problems. For example, according to the American Forest and Paper Association, in 1999 the U.S. alone used 10 billion paper grocery bags, which adds up to a lot of trees.
Reusable Bags Are a Better Option
But if you decline both paper and plastic bags, then how do you get your groceries home? The answer, according to many environmentalists, is high-quality reusable shopping bags made of materials that don’t harm the environment during production and don’t need to be discarded after each use. [You can find a good selection of high-quality reusable bags online at reusablebags.com. In addition, many organic grocery stores and consumer co-operatives carry reusable shopping bags.]
Experts estimate that 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed and discarded annually worldwide—more than a million per minute.
Here are a few facts about plastic bags to help demonstrate the value of reusable bags—to consumers and the environment:
• Plastic bags aren’t biodegradable. They actually go through a process called photodegradation—breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic particles that contaminate both soil and water, and end up entering the food chain when animals accidentally ingest them.
• According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 380 billion plastic bags are used in the United States every year. Of those, approximately 100 billion are plastic shopping bags, which cost retailers about $4 billion annually.
• According to various estimates, Taiwan consumes 20 billion plastic bags annually (900 per person), Japan consumes 300 billion bags each year (300 per person), and Australia consumes 6.9 billion plastic bags annually (326 per person).
• Hundreds of thousands of whales, dolphins, sea turtles and other marine mammals die every year after eating discarded plastic bags they mistake for food.
• Discarded plastic bags have become so common in Africa they have spawned a cottage industry. People there collect the bags and use them to weave hats, bags and other goods. According to the BBC, one such group routinely collects 30,000 bags every month.
• Plastic bags as litter have even become commonplace in Antarctica and other remote areas. According to David Barnes, a marine scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, plastic bags have gone from being rare in the late 1980s and early 1990s to being almost everywhere in Antarctica.
Some governments have recognized the severity of the problem and are taking action to help combat it.
Strategic Taxes Can Cut Plastic Bag Use
In 2001, for example, Ireland was using 1.2 billion plastic bags annually, about 316 per person. In 2002, the Irish government imposed a plastic bag consumption tax (called a PlasTax), which has reduced consumption by 90 percent. The tax of $.15 per bag is paid by consumers when they check out at the store. Besides cutting back on litter, Ireland’s tax has saved approximately 18 million liters of oil. Several other governments around the world are now considering a similar tax on plastic bags.
Governments Use the Law to Limit Plastic Bags
More recently, Japan passed a law that empowers the government to issue warnings to merchants that overuse plastic bags and don’t do enough to “reduce, reuse or recycle.” In Japanese culture, it is common for stores to wrap each item in its own bag, which the Japanese consider a matter of both good hygiene and respect or politeness.
Companies Making Tough Choices
Meanwhile, some eco-friendly companies—such as Toronto’s Mountain Equipment Co-op—are voluntarily exploring ethical alternatives to plastic bags, turning to biodegradable bags made from corn. The corn-based bags cost several times more than plastic bags, but are produced using much less energy and will break down in landfills or composters in four to 12 weeks.

Fonte: http://environment.about.com/od/recycling/a/reusablebags.htm

Global warming on plastic bottles
Global warming on plastic bottles is a real concern. The number of plastic bottles that we use in the United States each year is amazing. Considering the cost of bottles of water compared to the cost of tap water, we spend 10,000 times the amount on water bottles than we would if we just used tap water. Tap water is just as safe as bottled water and many times bottled water is also tap water. In the United States, the quality of tap water surpasses that which is required for bottled water. Essentially tap water is cleaner and safer than bottled water at least in the United States.
Reducing Global Warming
To reduce global warming on plastic bottles it is suggested to use tap water at home and to bottle your own water. You can take your tap water with you when you are on the goy using a reusable water container you can reduce the number of water bottles that end up in landfills. There are 60 million water bottles thrown away each day and only 10 percent of those bottles end up being recycled. That means that 90 percent of those 60 million bottles end up in landfills taking more than 1,000 years to breakdown and decompose. This is one of the largest problems with global warming on plastic bottles. With than many plastic bottles just ending up in a dump instead of being recycled and used in other products we are polluting our land and water supplies with this kind of waste. Even if every single bottle was recycled this is not the only problem with global warming on plastic bottles.
Oil Consumption and Plastic Bottles
You also so should consider the amount of oil that it takes to produce these plastic bottles. Plastic bottles are created from oil. To make the 50 billion plastic PET bottles each year it takes 1 and a half million bottles of oil. That is enough oil to fuel 1 million cars for an entire year. That is only the oil that goes into the bottles. It does not account for the energy it takes to run the manufacturing plants and the bottling company or to clean and prepare the water for bottling or for the shipping of the water once it is bottled.
Global warming on plastic bottles should also account for the amount of Carbon Dioxide that is released into the atmosphere. In fact, for every of PET plastic bottles three tons of carbon dioxide is created. This is 0.1 percent of greenhouse gas emissions each year or 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.
To reduce the effects of global warming on plastic bottles than we should consider using reusable bottles either from plastic or stainless steel canteens. The quality of water in the United States is high but if you are traveling outside of the United States than you should consider using plastic water bottles. By using reusable plastic bottles or stainless steel bottles, we can reduce the number of plastic bottles in the landfills. We can also reduce the amount of oil we use and the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. We will be saving ourselves money while saving the planet.