Charging for Plastic Bags Essay

Nowadays, many billions of plastic bags have been using every year, and it seems to be increased more and more. According to Noland (2013), in the UK, the number of plastic has risen up to 5.4% in 2010 to 2011. Another statistic illustrates that 90 percent of plastic bags do not be reused or recycled (Bobby, 2013). This shows that people do not care much about the effect of plastic bags. Therefore, the government should intervene to solve this problem: to introduce a charge for plastic bags. Plastic bag is one of major environmental issues. It provides many disadvantages for environments, animals, and even humans, so people should be aware for using plastic bags. In order to reduce using plastic bags, the government has to make a law of charging for using them. According to Noland (2013), Ireland has definitely decreased 95 percent of using plastic bags since they had a plastic bag tax in 2002. Wales’ statistic shows that rate of plastic bags had reduced to 22 percent because of introduced charging (Noland, 2013). It means that this project can persuade or support consumers to not use a lot of plastic bags, so it can protect the environment. In the United States, people use 100 billion plastic bags a year (Bobby, 2013). A huge of people is using plastic bags, so another reason of charging for plastic bags is it is impossible to stop use plastic bags because people still need them in daily life for carrying things. Moreover, producing plastic bags is a part of businesses. This will hard to ban plastic bags. Hence, people who want to use plastic bags should pay for it so that the government can use money from charging or taxes for doing other things that are useful. Opponents of charging for plastic bags say that this project does not help much about saving the environment. There is a better way of solving this problem, including alternatives to plastic bags. People can reuse and recycle the bags. However, alternatives to plastic bags still give harmful for the environment. According to Bobby (2013), reusable plastic bags can cause a brains and kidneys problems. Even though paper bags can break down, it provides a gas that leads to global warming (Bobby, 2013). Bobby also refers that cloth bags are more harmful than plastic bags because people require trees for making bags (2013). As with most things, there are pros and cons of both sides, but, overall, to introduce a charge for plastic bags provides more advantages. It is certainty that charging for plastic bags can reduce people to not use plastic bags. Moreover, it is nothing to do with people who produce plastic bags because they cannot ban plastic bags anyway, so having a charity are more benefits that banning plastic bags.