As a typical African bachelor not cooking on this faithful day wasn’t much an issue other than the fact that I had to walk a few blocks down my street in search of food to buy. Beans with plantain, a West African delicacy familiar to citizens of Ghana and Nigeria was my best hope to a perfect meal at that moment. Upon buying the food the vendor wrapped my beans in first, a white nylon popularly known as rubber bag in Ghana and (incorrectly called) ‘leather’ in NIGERIA, then to kill the visual attention, she further wrapped it in another black rubber bag. In addition I requested to buy sachet water and this was also wrapped in a bigger plastic bag, this time to carry both the beans and the two sachet water.
On getting home I realised that I have more than enough plastic bags for the day's business which got me asking a few environmental questions.
What are the effects of the use of plastic bags on our eco system?
•well I don't intend to scare you my esteemed reader(s) but for the record I will like to let you know that Plastic bags don't biodegrade, they photodegrade - breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits, contaminating the soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest them.
•A plastic bag can take between 400 to 1,000 years to break down in the environment.
•Plastic bags cause over 100,000 sea turtle and other marine animal deaths every year when animals mistake them for food.
Plastic bags are among the 12 items of debris most often found in coastal cleanups, according to the nonprofit Center for Marine Conservation.
•Nearly 90% of the debris in our oceans is plastic.
Residents in Accra-Ghana (La) can attest to that.
Plastics are a subspecies of a class of Materials known as polymers. These are composed of large molecules, formed by joining many, often thousands, of smaller molecules (monomers) together. Plastics are made from low-molecular-weight monomer precursors, organic materials, which are mostly derived from petroleum, that are joined together by a process called “polymerization.” Plastics owe their name to their most important property, the ability to be shaped to almost any form to produce articles of practical value. Plastics can be stiff and hard or flexible and soft. Because of their light weight, low cost, and desirable properties, their use has rapidly increased and they have replaced other materials, e.g. metals and glass. Plastics are used in millions of items; including cars, bulletproof vests, toys, hospital equipment, and food containers. More than a 40 billion kg of plastic were produced in 2000. Their increased use has resulted in concern with the toxicity associated with their manufacture and use, and the environmental impact arising from discarded plastics.
The increased production of plastic bags has over the years been quite alarming, figures put it at over 1 trillion over the years with the united states using over 100 billion bags annually and Nigeria at about the same figure, as a petroleum product this could be estimated as throwing away 12 million barrels of crude oil a year, I know this sounds surprising, but before you exclaim OMG let me feed you with more reasons of hating the use of plastic bags. Research shows that about 6% to 10% of our total oil supply goes to making plastic. Now from the beans story I narrated above it can be seen that just in the purchase of a few items, over half a dozen plastic bags where given to me. This places me just as an average Nigerian citizen in el rufai bus or an Accra resident in tro-tro with no option other than throwing away about 10 bags a week, 520 bags a year which is a fuel equivalent of 60 miles of driving. Now call to mind the Nigerian population of about 173.1 million and Ghana at about 26 million people. (now you can shout) this is exactly how little things make huge negative impacts without consciously thinking about it. Research has further proven to support the assertion that South Africa uses 85 billion plastic bags annually while Ghana is at about 71 billion.
If forcing down the bitter economic truths about using plastic bags doesn't scare you at this point you might as well want to look at it from a purely scientific basis. scientists have calculated the petroleum equivalent of a bag: it takes about 48 mega joule to produce a bag. This is exactly the same energy required to heat water to a boiling point. That 48 mega joule comes from the petroleum that the plastic itself is made from as well as the petroleum burned as energy in the manufacturing process to make the bag. An average car consumes 6.7 mega joule in driving one mile or the equivalent of 14 bags per mile driven.
In spite of these steeping evils of the use of this product, plastic bags have a record of causing untold harm to both the environment and human beings with plants being no exception to its evils .
As stated above plastic bags do not decay (in the strict scientific terminology biodegrade) as quickly as would human waste or paper when it is disposed off. In the event of it ever degrading that will take a whopping 1,000 years to eventually degrade and even at this, it is more so through the help of the sun in a manner known as photodegradation i.e. the sun breaks the nylon into smaller toxic particles. This process releases harmful waste into the eco system, polluting land, air and even water bodies. A good number of these plastic bags are swallowed by cows, goats and even dogs with aquatic animals like sharks falling victims. Especially, turtles mistaken it for jelly fish which is among its food chain.
Surprisingly the ugly picture I have tried to paint about plastic bags only points to the direct causal link it has on its users. However more remote effects of its use can be identified. It affects even the tourism sector for instance. In the last five years I have spent considerable amount of time in most west African countries and throughout I have noticed that plastic bags are a serious eyesore to the environment making tourist rethink their choice of ever lodging and spending time in most west African countries like Ghana, NIGERIA, Togo, Benin Republic and Ivory Coast. For instance the streets of Accra which boasts of massive hotels with multiple stars suffer decline in the customer index due to the state of the environment. Plastic bags are seen hanging right through hotel fences becoming an eye sore, polluting the air especially during heavy down pour, choking drainage systems and even killing animals that mistake them for food. Labadi beach one of the best sites for tourist attraction in the capital of Ghana has been heavily plagued with this predicament with close to over 90% of debris coming from the Atlantic Ocean being plastic bags. Despite my closeness to the beach I am discouraged from ever thinking of spending time at the beach due to its eyesore nature. These plastic bags have also been the leading engineer of the flood cases in Accra as they choke the drainage system forcing water resulting from heavy downpours to seek for other passages thereby resulting in the loss of properties and even lives. The good news is that some African nations like Uganda and South Africa have taken the bold initiative to ban and curtail the use of this product.
Humans who in turn consume sea foods that have this product in them risk having cancer. In fact research suggests that mental retardation in humans to some extent is owed to this including other birth defects like down syndrome. Sometimes we try to incinerate these plastics but this also has proven to be unsafe because when the product comes in contact with fire it produces DIXONS and FURANS which have all proven to be harmful to humans. A better suggestion for a safe environment is for the government to issue a statutory rule aimed at curtailing the use of plastic bags in our society. But before that is done we as individuals owe ourselves some basic moral duty to stay safe and few of those ways are to buy food in ceramic or paper containers.
Further practices we can adopt is to stop the following, microwaving of edibles whilst still in plastic bags, buying fatty foods in plastic bags, storing acidic foods like tomatoes or citrus in plastic bags as those tend to draw out the plastic poisons, and finally to also stop the use of plastic utensil like spoons, knives and cutting boards. Stay safe and remember.
HEALTH IS WEALTH.
Most of the statistics quoted in this article is owed to the non-profit organisation for Marine Conservation & UNEP.
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