You must have observed that grocery shops these days do not use plastic bags. They hand out all your things in either paper bags or cloth bags. So what happened to the plastic bags that we used? There is a reason plastic is slowly disappearing. In fact, it is a conscious effort by everyone as plastic is very harmful for our environment. Of course, now you would want to know why.
Whenever we throw something like paper, food peels, leaves etc there are small tiny creatures in nature – the bacteria – who eat these things up or turn them into useful products that nature loves. These things are called ‘Biodegradable’.
‘Non-Biodegradable‘ things, on the other hand, like glass, steel and plastic – can not be turned into useful, nature friendly products. The bacteria just can’t eat them up or break them up.
Plastic is harmful because it is ‘Non-Biodegradable’. When thrown on land it makes the soil less fertile. When thrown in water it chokes our ponds, rivers and oceans and harms the sea life. If animals eat plastic, it gets stuck in their tummy and makes them sick. Why? because the bacteria in their stomach cannot break the plastic up into smaller pieces.
Factories that make plastic have to make tons of them every day because people ask for plastic bags – in shopping malls, grocery stores, everywhere. We can help these factories by giving back the unused plastic bags in our house – this is called “Recycling”. Recycling helps factories make fresh plastic by using the old ones. We can also help by using cloth bags for shopping instead of plastic bags. Imagine if all of us stop asking for plastic bags the factories will have no reason to make them – they can then start making beautiful cloth bags.
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