Reasons Athens should enact a ban on single

Athens City Council recently introduced an ordinance to reduce single-use plastic bags (SUBPs) within the City of Athens. Some businesses embracing the idea have never given out SUPBs, while some other businesses have expressed concern that requiring customers to replace SUPBs with reusable bags will be an economic burden.

The ordinance covers stores and vendors with a proposed effective date of Jan. 1, 2024. This delay in enactment allows businesses to use up their supplies of SUPBs and, if they desire, arrange bag alternatives for customers to purchase. Better yet, it gives customers in Athens not accustomed to using reusable bags more opportunity to get into that habit of bringing their own reusable bags.

I’m writing this on behalf of the local volunteer group, Athens ReThink Plastics (ARP), which supports this ordinance. Similar laws have been enacted in many countries, states, and cities. Our mission has been to raise awareness about the adverse health and environmental impacts of plastic production, consumption, and disposal, and to reduce the use of single-use plastics. Since 2019, ARP has distributed more than 1,500 upcycled shopping bags made from feed and seed bags to replace SUPBs to an enthusiastic Athens community.

We recognize that some plastics are necessary such as those used in medical equipment. However, 41% of all plastic waste is composed of single-use plastic bags, packaging, and bottles, and eliminating the unnecessary uses would put a significant dent in plastic pollution. They should be kept from going into over-capacity landfills and littering our environment. Only 9% of all plastic was recycled in 2021 so clearly this is not the answer. We recognize that the volume of plastics in our environment cannot be completely eliminated with limited amount of plastics recycled, and the transition from using toxic material to cleaner resources will take time until technology develops safer alternatives.

So why should you change your habit of accepting a single-use plastic bag to go and then throwing it away? Here are some reasons that ARP supports an easy transition from SUPBs to reusable bags:

Do it for the future of our children. Single-use plastics never degrade and take up to 1,000 years to break down into smaller plastics called microplastics. We consume a credit card a week of plastics through the microplastics that we ingest and inhale. They are found in our blood, guts, lungs and even in breast milk. Unless we address this extremely serious issue, our grandchildren will be surrounded by plastics taking up their space on earth and breaking down into toxic waste.

Nearly everybody hates plastic bag pollution. An Oceana report this year stated that "82% of American voters want to reduce plastic production." SUPBs end up in our rivers, our landfill, and eventually in our oceans. They pollute our environment, and marine life and animals can ingest them and suffocate. See that single-use plastic bag hanging from a tree, stuck in a fence, blowing down the street?

The aditives in plastic are toxic. In the United States, over 10,000 toxic chemicals are added to plastics to make them flexible, rigid and colorful. Some of the toxic chemicals in plastics such as BPA and phthalates have been linked to cancers and are hormone disruptors. In the last 30 years, epidemiologists have found these chemicals linked to neurological disorders in children, including autism and ADHD, and the hormone-disrupting chemicals are linked to illnesses such as breast and prostate cancers, reduced sperm count and infertility. Though BPA was banned from baby bottles and pacifiers, it's still used in plastics. Unfortunately, the substitutes for BPA – BPS for instance — are just as harmful, and plastic food packaging can leach these chemicals into foods and beverages especially when heated.

The plastic industry, which makes plastics from fossil fuels, promotes the use of SUPBs. As motor vehicles move from gas to electric, and the demand for oil and gas goes down, the fossil fuel companies are focused on refining the oil and gas into petrochemicals used to make more plastics. The plastic industry is asking people to recycle their plastics rather than taking on the responsibility of proper disposal of these products. SUBPs cannot be recycled, and when sorted during the recycling process, can jam the recycling machinery. While only 9% of plastics are recycled yearly, we shouldn't overload our landfills or burn toxic plastic waste. Consider the recent train disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, where vinyl chloride (used in PVC plastics) was released into the environment. Chemical recycling has serious limitations as well.

In summary, taking a reusable bag shopping is good for everyone. Do it for our kids, our community, for the future of our earth, and do it because it's easy and, yes, cool! A sustainable future is a healthy future. Your reusable bag replaces 700 single-use plastic bags that otherwise would pollute our beautiful city and county and gobble up limited landfill space.

If you have a surplus of reusable bags, bring those bags (cleaned) to the Athens Farmers Market on Saturday, April 22, and ARP will collect them to give free to folks who need them.

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