Reusable Shopping Bags Reduce Plastic Waste

In era of environmental concern, the impact of human activity sometimes resulting the destruction of planet earth. One of the main contributors is use of single-use plastics, particularly in the form of disposable shopping bags. In Jakarta, plastic waste pollution has expanded into rivers and oceans, The Jakarta Open Data database was used to estimate the amount of plastic litter. By mass, plastic comprised approximately 74 % of the anthropogenic litter in rivers and 87 % in holding facilities. The riverine plastic proportion slightly increased downstream. Approximately 9.9 g/person/day of plastic litter was discharged into Jakarta's surface water during rainy season and recovered by floating booms. (Sari et al., 2022) causing a serious issue that needs to be addressed by both the government and the community.

When everyone concerns about this problem, there is one simple solution that could solve the problem, it is the use of reusable shopping bags. Beside of its function to reduce plastic waste, this type of bags also gives the comfort and personalized lifestyle. This article explores the significant benefits of the use of reusable shopping bag and discuss how small changes in our shopping behavior can contribute to effort towards a greener and cleaner planet by reducing plastic waste.

Single-use plastic bags have certain advantages, such as their low cost, high strength-to-weight ratio, and waterproof. These attributes contribute to their widespread use and popularity among consumers. However, the negative impact associated with single-use plastic bags are significant. They are rarely reused, challenging to decompose, and contribute to environmental pollution. The effect of these bags in the environment poses a threat to ecosystems, wildlife, and human health, encourage governments and communities worldwide to address the issue and implement solution to reduce their usage.

In response to the environmental challenges by single-use plastic bags, the United States government has adopted various strategies to reduce plastic waste. These strategies fall into five major categories: bans, imposition of fees and taxes, create minimum product design standards for bags, and requiring consumer education. Especially, a significant portion (95%) of these measures involves in ban on single-use plastic bags. Additionally, a majority of these usage, around 56.9%, include the imposition of required fees on paper and/or reusable bags as a means to further to avoid the use of disposable options and promote more sustainable alternatives. These efforts underscore a collective commitment to addressing the environmental impact of plastic waste and promote more continuous approach to packaging and consumption. (Wagner, 2017)

Reusable shopping bag is one of the solutions to reduce plastic waste, especially single use plastic bags. This bags usually made of paper or canvas, these materials have benefits such as it can be used many times, highly durable, bigger capacity, and it has multi functions besides being a shopping bag, this type of bag can also use as daily bag for students, office workers, or even merchandise. The use of this shopping bags type expected to solve the single use plastic bags problems. (Petroski, 2003)

Due to its flexible aesthetics and become a fashion item, tote bags have also become a source of livelihood. This can be seen in a village in Indonesia, Kedung Sroko, where the community involved in the production of tote bags as a promising business idea while building an attractive tourist village. The multipurpose of tote bags, also with their fashionable aspects, allows them to serve not only as practical items but also as trendy accessories. This activity has proven to be beneficial for the local economy, creating employment opportunities and contributing to the development of an attractive tourist destination. From these activities, it can be concluded that reusable bags, such as tote bags, offer numerous advantages compared to plastic based bag. (Kartika Y, 2023)

Reducing the use of single use plastic bag is very difficult due to the benefits that can helps us to do daily activity. Single use plastic bags have already created a lot of pollution especially on the ocean, so that why we need to use reusable paper bags to replace the function of plastic bags. For now, it is easy to get a paper tote bag, its already for sale in every minimarket, but people rarely used it because of the high price, so they are preferring to use a plastic bag. It needs more attention from government to educate people. and improve our awareness to decide what we can help for environmental concern.

In the end of the day, taking small action like using reusable shopping bags, we have already contributed to reduce the global plastic waste, hopefully this global concern can give a massive and effective impact to reach our goals, one step forward for greener and healthier planet. The recovery of earth can give a lot of benefit for all aspect of life.