A recent Facebook update from my friend who lived in NYC for over a decade and recently moved to Korea made me think of plastic bags.
According to her, no grocery stores give shoppers a plastic shopping bag any longer in Korea. She found out later that they have to buy a trash bag that is supplied by the government and costs about $13!
Along the same lines, when I shop at Trader Joe’s, my favorite store, I always choose a paper bag over plastic. I bring my cloth bag, but sometimes I can’t fit all the items into my bag (yes, I should buy just the amount of food that I can carry in one bag!). But, in other grocery stores, I have no choice but to use plastic bags.
Did you know Americans use approximately 1 billion shopping bags, creating 300,000 tons of landfill waste each year?Worse, plastic bags do not biodegrade. Light breaks them down into smaller and smaller particles that contaminate the soil and water and that are expensive and difficult to remove. Perhaps not surprisingly, less than 1 percent of plastic bags are recycled each year.
And recycling one ton of plastic bags is not cheap either: it costs $4,000. So, actually the Korean government is giving people a break since the recycled product can be sold for $32, according to the report “Why Plastic Bag Fees Work” (May 2009) by the Clean Air Council.
NYC itself creates enough garbage to fill the Empire State Building each day.
That means New Yorkers are filling up a space that is 37 million cubic feet in size!
In any case, so, a country like Korea implements a drastic regime that encourages people not to use plastic bags. But really, what can we do about changing our casual sense of using a plastic bag or reducing garbage in our everyday life?
Last week, I was invited to a private viewing of a film calledNo Impact Man at OMEGA, a nonprofit educational center offering programs for wellness and personal growth, in Hudson Valley, NY.
Colin and me at the private showing of No Impact Man
The film is a 2009 American documentary directed by Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein. No Impact Man, which premiered Sept. 4, 2009, follows Colin Beavan and his family during their year-long experiment to stop a consumption lifestyle and have a sustainable zero impact on the environment out of their 5th Ave. co-op apartment in NYC.
What I was intrigued by the most during their experimental year was a change in the family dynamics. Michelle, Colin’s wife, and their two-year-old daughter are dragged into the fray unwillingly. Zero impact on the environment is not easy task to achieve in Manhattan. But she gradually changed her attitude toward her husband’s attempt.
Overall, I found the movie an incredibly compelling story about one New Yorker family’s struggle to change their view of the world.
Now, Colin is running for the US Congress, representing central Brooklyn. He said that he is doing this not only to win, but, to make a strong statement. His aim is to create an engaged and opened community that I support. If he survived during the experimental year, I believe that he can excel in this new challenge, and I am curious to know what comes out of his trial this time.
http://www.cleanair.org/Waste/wasteFacts.html
No Impact Man trailer:
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