21 May What To Do With Soft Plastic Bags
Once upon a time men and women would put the groceries away and without giving it another thought they would scrunch up the plastic bags and shove them into the garbage can. Sometimes, if they were particularly conscientious or on a budget they would reuse those grocery bags as trash can liners. Long term implications of non-biodegradable plastics in landfills wasn’t a hot topic and it didn’t occur to everyone that these bags might remain as unpleasant reminders of our rampant consumerism for future generations.
Enter a new generation of consumers who noticed that decades later, plastic was still hanging around. In fact, it can take roughly 1000 years for a plastic non-biodegradable bag to break down. That’s 500 years longer than a disposable diaper, by the way.
Talk of recycling plastic and reusing bags soon starts to gain traction, but doesn’t catch on as quickly as it should have. Use of plastic doubles, then doubles again and again.
It is estimated that 100 millions tons of plastic debris is floating around in the oceans and that each year billions and billions of plastic bags are buried in landfills where they cannot be reused or recycled into new plastic products.
Not all municipalities can collect plastics at curbside and there is often some confusion over what we can recycle and where.
At Island Return It, we are very happy to announce that under the new MMBC program we can accept (free of charge) plastic bags from grocery and retail stores, bread bags, newspaper bags and dry cleaning bags. We can also accept the over-wrap from flats of water bottles (or juice boxes, paper towels etc.) That’s just the soft plastic category.
For firmer plastics we are able to accept the following:
– Non Beverage Bottles (We already accept ready to drink beverage containers)
– Plastic Jars, Trays, Tubes & Lids
– Cold Drink Cups
– Dairy Containers
– Clamshells
– Pails and Garden Pots
– PVC Bottles
We welcome your questions and comments and would like to provide answers to anyone with questions. You can comment or leave a question on our Facebook Page and we will answer you ASAP. For full details on the MMBC program, click here.
