By: Manuel Rodriguez Becerra. Weather columnist mcrod@cable.net.cohave a life of 1,000 years and are between half and one trillion plastic bags anual.La is a symbol of comfort: serves, among hundreds of uses to haul market and a variety of products including trash receptacle and beach bag, and also to collect thanks dog. Unfortunately, this gadget available and extremely useful is also a symbol of environmental degradation.
plastic bags, with its great ubiquity, have permeated all corners of the Earth. We see them in public parks and streets, in the middle of the countryside, the desert and the dense jungle, strung on a tree branch or a cable of light floating in the air and wandering rivers, streams, lakes and seas. According to Blue Ocean Society for the Conservation of Sea 46,000 pieces of plastic litter floating on every square mile of sea surface, and about 100,000 marine mammals and one million birds die annually to eat or get caught in its web.
The most serious is that the plastic bags, made mainly from oil and gas, have an estimated life of 1,000 years, before breaking into small toxic particles. Thus, the invasion of this trash has a way of accumulation alarming for the future: according to the Environmental Agency of the United States today are produced in the world between 500,000 million and a trillion plastic bags per year. Some countries have tried
voluntary reduction of use by consumers and businesses, including its replacement by substitutes. The failure has been colossal and, for example, in the United States, its use has increased fivefold between 1980 and 2005 to rise today to 100,000 million plastic bags annually, of which only recycles about 1 percent, the rest goes to landfills or pollute the space around us.
The failure of voluntarism has prompted many governments to issue binding regulations. In 2001, Ireland imposed a tax on plastic bags reduced their consumption by 90 percent. In turn, Taiwan is not allows free supply of supermarkets, and the United Kingdom has proposed a ban. During the past year, there has been a growing movement to restrict their use in U.S. cities like San Francisco, Boston, Baltimore and New York, the latter city that beat all department stores and retail chains the reciclarlas.En required to collect and Colombia, it is urgent to stop the invasion of plastic garbage in the entire national territory, beyond San Andres and Providencia, the place where they have already taken some steps. Some say it's a luxury that only rich nations can be unaware that many developing countries are fighting back, as Bangladesh, China, Kenya, South Africa and Thailand. In China, banned the manufacture, sale and use of plastic bags with a thickness less than 0.00098 inch, or the typical stock-market and the free provision of those thicker. The regulation, issued on Dec. 31, urges citizens to "return to cloth bags and baskets to market." Require a national and local levels to combat the scourge caused by plastic bags to the environment . Both the Ministry of Environment as the new mayors of large cities and regional autonomous corporations have the great challenge and the obligation to establish regulations to substantially reduce its use, which, in addition to solving a serious problem of pollution, would serve to educate citizens on ways to more sustainable consumption and landscape protection.
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