City of Toronto Charges 5 Cents Per Plastic Bag By Amy Nutt. At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Recently, a new city ordinance was put in place by Toronto in an effort to reduce waste in landfills, waste management and encourage consumers to recycle. This ordinance requires all shoppers to pay a 5 cents per bag fee whenever they make a purchase at area stores. This is an attempt to encourage shoppers to bring their own bags whenever they need to shop.

Recycling shopping bags to reduce landfill waste is not a new concept. It's something that consumers have had within their power to do for many years. The only thing that's changed is that it's never been enforced until now. Toronto's citizens are somewhat on the fence about this new ordinance. Some think it's a terrible injustice and way for the government to milk more money out of them. Other consumers just think it's a smart idea to re-use shopping bags as a way of protecting the environment from further damage.

Whatever the case may be, many consumers believe that this is just another sign of the times for this generation of more environmentally responsible consumers. People need a reminder every now and then of how their daily habits impact the environment in a very real way. Just think of how the act of one person re-using their shopping bags could positively impact and reduce the amount of waste dumped into landfills yearly? Now multiply that by the millions of inhabitants of the city of Toronto and that benefit increases exponentially.

Let's get back to basics to understand how and why this ordinance was dreamed up in the first place. Plastic bags are understood to be bad for the environment. Once they are used to carry a small amount of store-bought goods, they are generally tossed into the trash can and forgotten about. But that isn't the end for the average plastic shopping bag. The bag is dumped into the city trash collection, then into big piles that are then dumped into landfills. The average lifespan of a plastic bag, depending on its design, is anywhere from one to ten years, maybe more. So that momentary use ends up clogging up the earth for many years afterwards.

And plastic bags are responsible for the injury and death of wildlife and sea creatures. Plastic bags pollute the ground, water ways, and oceans. They drift in the wind and end up in trees where birds can get stuck in them. They get ingested by animals who then either choke to death or get strangled in them. Plastic bags eventually find their ways to the ocean where sea-life ingest them of become entangled in them. Plastic bags litter the roadways, parks, forests and anywhere else they happen to end up. They are a nuisance and a hazard to the environment anyway you look at it.

So the city of Toronto decided to set an example for the rest of the world by making consumers stop and think about how many plastic bags they are using in an average week. They must pay that extra 5 cents per bag and every time they do they make that decision on whether or not they will pay for them the next time they shop, or if they will bring their recycled bags along for future shopping trips. Perhaps we can learn a lot from this new law and start deciding if it's worth it to pay the extra or bring one from home?

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