Yearly there are tons and tons of plastic bags that go to the open dump sites in the Philippines. Most of them are used shopping bags from Manila’s groceries, supermarkets and department stores. Plastic bags are non-biodegradable trash. When they go to the dump sites, they cannot be recycled or converted into another form just like the paper or the intestines of the fish.
How many plastic bags can one factory produce in one minute? One thousand? Ten thousand? We keep on producing plastic bags, we use it once or twice and then we throw them all away? Where do they go when we are finished with them?
Aside from the dump sites, others go to our seas. They trap the fishes and make it harder for them to breathe under the water.
What shall we do with the used plastic bags that will remain plastic bags in our dump sites forever? There is nothing else to do but to slowly turn to other kinds of materials for our shopping bags. We can use brown paper bags. We can use the rattan basket our lolos and lolas used when they were doing their marketing. There are chains of supermarkets in Manila that are already selling “green” bags which are made from recyclable non-plastic materials. I bought one from the chain nearest my place the first time I did my shopping here. I’ve been using this “green” bag ever since.
Shopping demands responsibility not only in our finances but also in our environment-consciousness. Little things like reducing our use of plastic shopping bags can mean a big acres of land without plastic wastes hundreds of years from now. No one is too small to contribute to our earth.
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