Businesses should charge extra for bags.

Happy to encourage your curiosity! Before I let the cat out of the bag, I would like to establish that I will be talking about plastic bags, but referring to shopping bags in general. Plastic Bags:Use:About 1 trillion plastic bags are used yearly. This figure breaks down to an average of about one million plastic bags per minute. In 2008, almost 4 million tonnes of plastic bags were produced. The average family consumes about 60 bags within four trips to the grocery store. [1]Problem:Economic!Plastic bags cost retailers in the US alone 4 billion dollars [1]. That's 4 billion dollars that could go towards promotional specials or cheaper prices on goods. Even better though! A car can drive about one mile on the amount of petroleum it takes to produce just 14 plastic bags [4]. Lower gas prices anyone? But wait, theres more! New York City spends ten billion dollars a year on plastic bags, but not to bring them in to the city. That ten billion a year is to export 100,000 tonnes of plastic bags to a landfill in South carolina [2]. There are about 50,000 homeless people in New York City [3]. I did the math, and the ten billion dollars that goes towards plastic bags every year in NYC is enough to give each homeless person TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS PER YEAR. I'm not saying thats what they should do, but I'm hoping you're catching my drift here. And thats just how much it costs to throw them away.. just in NYC.. imagine how much income there could be from plastic bags... It gets worse though...Environmental!Unfortunately, plastic bags don't go away when you throw away. Of the four million tonnes of plastic bags produced worldwide in 2008, three and a half million tonnes were discarded [1]. Science has given an estimate that there is an average of about 46,000 pieces of plastic floating around in every square mile of the ocean [4]. Atleast 267 species suffer from geting tangled in or ingesting plastic [5]. Why does it all end up in the ocean? Plastic bags can take up to 1,000 to fully degrade [4]. Plastic has been acumulating in our oceans since it's been invented. Granted, plastic bottles and lego are included in the later numbers, but packaging (plastic bags, trash bags, ziplocks etc) on average accounts for 1/3 of all household waste [6]. I didn't mean for this to turn into an infomercial but there was just so much information I could not leave out. Solution! Charge for plastic bags! Though they do cause so many issues, a ban on plastic bags would be unnecessary. To charge for plastic bags is to acknowledge that people may need them now and then, but a quarter per bag would also be motivation enough for bringing reusable bags! The average reusable shopping bag shouldn't cost more than about 12 dollars. If bags cost a quarter each, then 48 bags cost as much as a reusable shopping bag. As you may recall, the average family consumes about 60 bags within four trips to the grocery store. I've had my reusable shopping bags for about a year now and they have lasted me well over four trips to the grocery store. Now, this is now an original idea. In 2002, Ireland introduced a plastic tax called the "PlasTax." Ireland residens are required to pay 33 cents per plastic bag. Since PlasTax, the use of plastic bags has gone down by 90% from 328 to 21 plastic bags per person per year. The 180 million pounds they've made is said to go towards environmental protection. [7]Granted, this direction would cost more to the consumer, but with the money saved by businesses and government, it could all trickle right back into your wallet. Not to mention a cleaner, greener home for future generations. [1] http://www.reuseit.com...[2] http://www.nytimes.com...[3] http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org...[4] http://www.inspirationgreen.com...[5] http://www.worldwatch.org...[6] http://www.cleanair.org...[7] http://www.bbc.com...