Plastic is incredibly harmful to the environment and having plastic bags stationed at every grocery store doesn’t help. The average American will bring home around 1,500 plastic bags a year. That’s 1,500 bags, or more, that will be used once then thrown out. These bags will end up in landfills or worse, they’ll end up in the ocean where they will continue to harm wildlife. Although there are many people who feel strongly about recycling, not all plastic can be recycled (primarily due to companies not wanting to put the extra cost into recycling them.)

Once these bags end up in landfills, they’ll remain there for decades on end. Plastic, as many are aware of, is not an eco friendly material and will never decompose on its own. Plastic can never be absorbed into the Earth and therefore can never replace the needs of the environment. All it will ever be able to do is prevent the growth of various ecosystems and aid in the pollution of the world we live in. Landfills are infested with disease, disease which can lead to various unexplainable illnesses and inhospitable areas (for humans, animals, and nature alike)

What’s worse, if these bags manage to find their way into the ocean—as many of them already have—they will begin to harm the wildlife that’s crucial to maintaining the stability of the food chain. Although we are very high up on the food chain we are not immune to it’s changes. If fish and the environments they live in begin to fail due to human pollution (rather than it naturally occurring) the predators that depends on them to survive such as birds, dolphins, turtles etc. will die as well. Once these creatures die (if we are to ignore the tragedy the extinction of these animals would cause) people will have to find new ways to sustain the Earth and each other. This sustainability is too great a deal for humans to solve alone ESPECIALLY because we still have so many issues we must deal with now.