Kalimpong Veterans' Club distributed cloth bags in Kalimpong town

KalimNews, Kalimpong, 30 November 2013: With an objective to discourage the use of polythene and plastic bags and encourage the use of cloth bags, Kalimpong Veterans Club has taken an initiative. 

Its volunteers distributed cloth bags to the common people in the Kalimpong town. To keep the town clean and avoid the hazards of plastic and polythene bags, cloth bags printed with slogan of "Clean Kalimpong, Green Kalimpong" thousands of cloth bags were distributed free. Volunteers targeted peoples carrying polythene bags and were requested to handover the poly bags and use the cloth bags distributed by the club. 

The initiative of the club is well appreciated and the friendly approach was praised by one and all. 

Millions of discarded plastic shopping bags end up as litter in the environment when improperly disposed of. The same properties that have made plastic bags so commercially successful and ubiquitous—namely their low weight and resistance to degradation—have also contributed to their proliferation in the environment. 

Plastic bags are preferred by all as they are easily available and very cheap, durable and easy to handle. But due to their durability, plastic bags can take centuries to decompose. On land, plastic bags are one of the most prevalent types of litter in inhabited areas. Large buildups of plastic bags can clog drainage systems and contribute to flooding and landslides. 

Heavy-duty plastic shopping bags are suitable for reuse as reusable shopping bags. Lighter weight bags are often reused as trash bags. All types of plastic shopping bag can be recycled into new bags where effective collection schemes exist.

But in places like Kalimpong such recycling practice is is not encouraged as there are no such provision and industries where these used plastics can be recycled and people litter them after their use.

Oil and natural gas are the major raw materials of plastics. Great amounts of water and fossil fuels are used annually in the manufacture and subsequent transport of single-use plastic bags to stores and businesses worldwide. 

Worldwatch Institute says that four to five trillion plastic bags were produced worldwide in 2002 alone and that Americans throw away 100 billion polyethylene plastic bags each year. 

An estimated 12 million barrels of oil is required to make that many plastic bags. Most are used just once and discarded. 

Contrary to popular thought, using paper bags is not less harmful to the environment than using plastic. It takes more than four times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag as it does to manufacture a plastic bag. 

Of course, most paper comes from tree pulp and each new paper grocery bag you use is made from mostly virgin pulp for better strength and elasticity, so the impact of paper bag production on forests is enormous. In 1999, 14 million trees were cut to produce the 10 billion paper grocery bags used by Americans that year alone. 

Paper bag production delivers a global warming double-whammy forests, major absorbers of greenhouse gases, have to be cut down, and then the subsequent manufacturing of bags produces greenhouse gases. One 15 to 20 year old tree makes only 700 bags. 

Plastic and paper shopping bags are recyclable. Unfortunately, recycling rates of either type of disposable bag are extremely low, with only 10 to 15% of paper bags and 1 to 3% of plastic bags being recycled, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

Additionally, most people tend to forget that the processes involved in recycling of all products, including plastic and paper shopping bags, include collection, transportation, processing and conversion. All require energy, often derived from oil. The non-recycled bags end up in landfills where degradation is extremely slow or they blow about city streets, countrysides and beaches as ugly litter and potential wildlife killers. 

The preferred alternative to this costly energy use is prevention of the waste in the first place. Environmentalists says not to use disposable single-use plastic and paper bags at all but to use a sturdy, long lasting cloth bag to carry home store purchases. By doing so there will be decrease in deforestation, litter, and plastic particle contamination in the environment and reduce the environmental and monetary costs of producing, transporting, recycling, and landfilling paper and plastic bags. 

Plastic shopping bags, carrier bags or plastic grocery bags are a type of shopping bag made from various kinds of plastic used by consumers worldwide since the 1960s, these bags are sometimes called single-use bags, referring to carrying items from a store to a home. 

However, reuse for storage or trash is common, and modern plastic shopping bags are increasingly recyclable or biodegradable. 

In recent decades, numerous countries have introduced legislation restricting the sale of plastic bags, in a bid to reduce littering and pollution. Traditional plastic bags are usually made from polyethylene, which consists of long chains of ethylene monomers. Ethylene is derived from natural gas and petroleum. The polyethylene used in most plastic shopping bags is either low-density or, more often, high-density. Color concentrates and other additives are often used to add tint to the plastic. 

Plastic shopping bags are commonly manufactured by blown film extrusion.Some modern bags are made of vegetable-based bioplastics, which can decay organically and prevent a build-up of toxic plastic bags in landfills and the natural environment. Bags can also be made from degradable polyethylene film. However, most degradable bags do not readily decompose in a sealed landfill and represent a possible contaminant to plastic recycling operations. Plastic shopping bags could be made from polylactic acid (PLA), a biodegradable polymer derived from lactic acid, although this is not widely used.

In general, biodegradable plastic bags need to be kept separate from conventional plastic recycling systems.