Kids for Earth

Suffocation

Infants and young children have died as a result of playing with plastic bags. Every year, the Consumer Product Safety Commission receives about 25 reports of plastic bags-infant death.Because of the thin,airtight material,infants can easily block their mouths and nostrils with the plastic bag and suffocate.

Effects
If not carefully disposed of,plastic bags can be devastating to animal life. “DEFRA”(Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)reported that 1,678,900 tons of plastic bags do not decay easily,they stay in environments longer,causing more build-up up on the nature stay landscape than a more degradable like paper would. The Marrickville Council reports that over 100’000 whales,turtles and birds die every year as a result of plastic in their environment.

Prevention/Solution
Abstaining from plastic bag use as much as possible will reduce the chances of accidental infant death, and it will reduce the amount of plastic waste in the environment.

A plastic bag is also reusable,though. it does not necessarily have to be thrown away after a single use. Try to use each plastic bag for as long as possible.
This will help reduce the number of plastic bags in circulation.

Pasir Ris park is located on the east of Singapore. It’s a very beautiful place, with bike and jogging lanes. There’s even a boardwalk, that leads you through a mangrove. We went at low tide, and though the tide is supposed to take the rubbish out of the mangrove, it looks more like it brings it all in. The mangrove was littered with plastic items. Most was disposable, trash carelessly thrown on the ground or blown out of a landfill. But there were also bigger objects; a salad bowl, a flip flop…

Unfortunately, it is difficult to clean up all this trash because of the mangrove’s wildlife, and because of the uneven terrain. It makes sense that someone cleans it up, but what would have been ideal is if nobody had but it here in the first place. There were lots of plastic bags,and I have to strain the point that these bags have an extremely slim chance of being recycled, now that they are stuck in the mangrove. So those plastic bags will stay on earth for ever.

Just another friendly reminder not to use plastic bags.