Blog 1 - Battle of the Bags

            Throughout the video of the Battle of the Bags I found a couple of interesting points made from people in the video about how bags can negatively affect the environment in ways that I have not thought of before. One of these concerns are the “flying toilets” where people would defecate in plastic bags and leave them around the city. This shocked me as I have never seen this before and have not heard of it before now. Another point that I have never considered before was how water collected in plastic bags could help mosquitoes breed which can have varying negative effects depending on where you are around the world. 

In the video, it shows many different ways that people are trying to combat plastic bags from police enforcement squads, banning plastic bags,  and personal decisions to no longer use plastic bags. I think that these are valiant efforts made by the government and people. The main one that stood out to me was the police enforcement squad in India as I have never seen a police squad dedicated to busting illegal plastic bags before. As stated in the video the team will drive around the city and make inspections on businesses, wholesalers, and distributors to ensure they are using bags that fall within regulation. If found that they are using illegal bags those said bags would be seized and the violator fined. 

With people all around the world having used plastic bags for decades, it has left a lot of waste around the world and in the oceans. To get an effective clean up of plastic bags it would take a global scale with support from nations, cities, and individuals to attempt to clean the earth of most or all plastic bag waste. An idea to help clean up plastic bags could be a bounty like system where a plastic bag can get someone like 5 cents or something similar. Although this route would take a lot of money and could be considered unfeasible. Currently there are efforts from the ocean cleanup where they will use large nets to help capture garbage and debris which include plastic bags to help clean up the oceans and rivers. Below are two pictures showing these operations from the ocean cleanup and attached is a link to the ocean cleanup website where they explain more about their operations and how you can help.

On the other hand there are companies that say that the plastic bag waste is something that is being blown out of proportions or is being looked at in the wrong light. Reasons they give are that plastic bags are robust, useful, and can serve multiple services before being thrown away, like being used to carry products and being used as garbage bags. In the video it is also stated that having a product that can be recycled and used again is a sustainable resource. Although I do think that the manufacturers trying to convince the public that plastic bags are misunderstood is not being truthful to the damage that they cause, I also think that plastic bags are something that will be continued to be used all around the world as it is too convenient to not use and will not fall out of favor until a better carrying method is invented.

Here is the link to The Ocean Clean Up: https://theoceancleanup.com/