International Plastic Bag Free Day 2023: Date, History, Facts about Plastic Bag

The 3rd of July is International Plastic Bag Free Day, a global initiative to eliminate the use of plastic bags. Plastic bags may seem like a useful convenience for grocery purchasing, but they have a devastating impact on the environment. Plastic bags can take up to 500 years to decompose, so they make up a significant portion of what remains in our landfills and pollutes our waterways.

The background of International Plastic Bag Free Day

Throughout the majority of human history, single-use products were considered sacrilegious. But as the Industrial Revolution ended and the modern era began, plastic became an affordable and abundant resource. Plastic containers are merely one example. From invention to prohibition, the history of the plastic bag has had an impact on our world. In England’s Northwich chemical facility in 1933, polyethylene, the most popular plastic, was accidentally created. While polyethylene had been produced in small batches previously, this was the first industrially viable synthesis of the material, and the British military used it in secret during World War II. By 1965, the Swedish company Celloplast had patented the one-piece polyethylene grocery bag. Invented by the Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin, plastic bags are rapidly replacing cloth and plastic in Europe. In 1979, after controlling 80 percent of the bag market in Europe, plastic bags were extensively introduced in the United States. Plastic bag manufacturers began aggressively advertising their product as preferable to paper and reusable bags. Charles Moore, a sailor and researcher, did not discover the Great Pacific Garbage Patch until 1997. It is the largest of several gyres in the world’s oceans where vast quantities of plastic refuse have accumulated, endangering marine life. Plastic bags are notorious for murdering sea turtles, who mistake them for jellyfish and consume them. In 2002, Bangladesh became the first country in the world to institute a ban on thin plastic bags after it was discovered that plastic bags played a significant role in clogging drainage systems during catastrophic flooding. Other nations, such as South Africa, Rwanda, China, Australia, and Italy, soon followed suit. International Plastic Bag Free Day seeks safer alternatives to demonstrate the viability of a world without excessive plastic use. It is a component of the Break Free from Plastic Movement, which began in September 2016 and has nearly 1,500 participating organisations. The movement seeks solutions to the plastic pollution crisis in order to make the planet safer for humans, fauna, and the environment.

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5 IMPORTANT FACTS REGARDING PLASTIC BAG USE

It takes over 700 years for single-use plastic to begin to decompose and over a millennium to completely degrade. In 2008, the intestines of a beached sperm whale contained nearly 50 pounds of single-use plastic. If situated next to one another, the bags would circumnavigate the globe seven times. Globally, only 1% to 3% of plastic bags are recycled, according to some reports. In the Northern Pacific, there are six times more particles of single-use plastic than plankton.

INTERNATIONAL PLASTIC BAG FREE DAY DATES