Emily Packer of Teens Turning Green speaks with Marin IJ reporter Roger Roberts at BYOB Marin's press conference at the Marin County Farmers Market on December 17, 2010.
PROBLEM – IT’S NOT PAPER VS PLASTIC
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Californians use 19 billion plastic carryout bags annually, or 600 per second.
- Fewer than 5% of these bags are recycled.
- Marin residents throw away 138 million bags annually; these end up in our landfill, streets, and parks.
- Plastic bags and their scraps are among the most frequently-found items of litter on street and coastline cleanups, and in scientific trawls of the Pacific Ocean.
- Paper bags generate 70% more air and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags
- Paper bags use 4 times as much energy to construct compared to a plastic bag
- Paper bags use 84 times as much energy to recycle compared to a plastic bag
- Paper bags use more space in landfills than plastic bags
- Certain chemicals found in plastics (especially BPA, phthalates, PFOA, PFOS, polystyrene, and additives such as antimony, cadmium, and lead) are associated with a who’s who of modern disorders, including asthma, cancer, diabetes, obesity, premature puberty, and reproductive failure.
- In 1999, 14 million trees were cut to produce the 10 billion paper grocery bags used by Americans that year alone