:: Recycling In Malaysia ::

Reusable Bags.

The next time you pay a trip to your neighbourhood supermarket, think about bringing your own reusable grocery bags instead, or think about purchasing a few of their green bags (they cost less than RM5) to use instead of relying on plastic bags which largely contribute to the rapid degradation of our planet. Each year, almost 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are unnecessarily consumed worldwide. That works out to almost 1 million per minute, and almost all of them end up as litter each year.

Around the world, supermarkets are starting to charge consumers for each plastic bag they use and New Delhi, San Francisco and Los Angeles have even announced an outright ban on plastic bags. These are commendable measures taken to educate the public on the environmental impact of plastic bags as well as reduce reliance on them by providing the public with realistic and affordable alternative options.

Other than clogging drains during floods and posing as eyesores in public areas, plastic bags are a very big threat to the existence of animals, especially marine and sea animals that get entangled in them or eat them. Plastic bags that land in toxic waste spills can also absorb toxic chemicals making them dangerous to the wildlife around them. Besides that, as plastic bags are not biodegradable, they may break up into smaller particles which could pose as an ever bigger threat to the environment. Up to hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags thinking they are jellyfish or other smaller marine animals.

Spending a little more money investing in reusable bags especially for your groceries is a small price to pay to ensure the future of the world we know. Even though it may seem like a small, trivial measure in the face of the bigger enemy, global warming, every little bit counts and every small step makes a difference. It is our job to ensure that the world we know and grew up in will be the same for our future generations.

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