When it comes to the topic on protecting the environment by banning the use of plastic bags, people everywhere across the United States seem to ignore it, the question is, why? When people think of the environment they think about everything that is surrounding them. A huge debate in the year of 2016 was if plastic bags should be banned or if they should remain in grocery stores. When traveling to certain beaches along the beach there are numerous of plastic bags just laying there waiting for innocent animals, both from the ocean and land, to come and pick them up. People do not realize that the environment affects human life in one way or another, without it life on earth would not happen.
In the 2016 election, located on the voting ballet was a section talking about if California should do away with plastic bags. The proposal passed obviously due to the fact that less plastic bags would help make the environment a little safer not only for ocean life, but as well as for life on land. If a person were to go out and ask other citizens about their view on the ban of plastic bags it would probably be a negative side because some find it frustrating of paying ten cents for a plastic bag. Little do they know that ten cents that is being paid is not only going towards California, but as well as the environment.
In the Environmental Journal one of the articles mentions everything that has to do with the plastic bag ban. The article, Doing Away with Plastic Bags: International Patterns of Norm Emergence and Policy Implementation written by Jennifer Clapp and Linda Swanston, discusses how plastic bags are bad for the environment. This interesting article mentions in the beginning, “Over the past decade, a remarkable number of local, sub-national and national governments have passed legislation to ban or severely restrict the use of plastic shopping bags (Clapp and Swanston 1). It is said in the article that the discussion and debate on banning plastic bags is not something that is new to the world, although hatred towards this topic grew rather quickly.
According to an article written by Taryn Luna, located in the Sacramento Bee, Californians Say Farwell to the Plastic Bag, The pro-ban campaign cast plastic bags as an ecological nuisance that ultimately end up in rivers, streams, oceans and other waterways (Luna). This article is saying that plastic bags can end up in places where humans and other living organisms get their drinking water. There have been problems in the past where people would just throw plastic bags on the floor and not realizing where they might end up. Research has been done and it is said that plastic bags decompose a lot slower than other trash that have been littered, therefore causing a problem everywhere that they are.
According to Edward Said’s novel Orientalism in chapter one, “… the fact that knowledge- no matter how special it is- is regulated first by the local concerns of a specialist, later by the general concerns…” (Said 56). The use of banning plastic bags and protecting the environment can relate to what Said is saying by the fact that concerns grew about the environment and the safety of it. The reason plastic bags were brought up in conversation is because plastic has been a major problem for our environment. Although the plastic bags have been banned other sources of bags have been used to replace the true plastic. According to the article, California Statewide Plastic Bag Ban Legislation, “… to certify the alternative bags to be: paper made from recycled material; plastic bags that contain at least 20 percent recycled material and are manufactured to withstand over 100 uses; or made from compostable material” (Biocycle).
There are different opinions about this topic, but the people that do not agree need to realize that if the world continued to use plastic bags the environment may not end up as healthy as it should. So, the banning of plastic bags should benefit in keeping the environment not only looking better, but also keeping it safe.
California Statewide Plastic Bag Ban Legislation. Biocycle, vol. 55, no. 6, July 2014, p. 12. EBSCOhost.
Clapp, Jennifer. Doing Away with Plastic Bags: International Patterns of Norm Emergence and Policy Implementation. 2009, Sept. 24.
Luna, Taryn. Californians Say Farewell to the Plastic Bag. Sacramento Bee. 2016 Nov. 10. Web.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York, Vintage Books, 2004. Print.
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