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| Sunday, 7 November 2004 |
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Junior Observer |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Are plastic bags harming the environment? "Paper or plastic?" Nearly every time someone buys groceries, he or she is asked this question. The answer is not as easy as it may seem. According to environmentalists, plastic bags and paper bags both have drawbacks. Plastic bags are everywhere. According to the Virginia-based American Plastics Council, 80 per cent of groceries are packed in plastic bags. "The numbers are absolutely staggering," said Vincent Cobb, a businessperson from Chicago who launched reusablebags.com. He notes that consumers use between 500 billion and one trillion plastic bags per year worldwide. Plastic bags can be found in landfills, stuck on trees, and floating in the ocean. What is the effect of all these bags? Some experts say that they harm the environment. Plastic bags can take hundreds of years to break down. As they break down, they release poisonous materials into the water and soil. Plastic bags in the ocean can choke and strangle wildlife. Endangered sea turtles eat the bags and often choke on them - probably because the bags look like jellyfish, the main food of many sea turtles. In fact, floating plastic bags have been spotted as far north as the Arctic Ocean to as far south as the southern end of South America. One expert predicts that within ten years, plastic bags will wash up in Antarctica! Despite these negative effects, plastic bags do have some advantages. "Plastic grocery bags are some of the most reused items around the house," explained Laurie Kusek of the American Plastics Council. Plastic bags hold school lunches, line trash cans, and serve as gym bags. These uses decrease plastic bag waste. According to the Film and Bag Federation, a trade group within the Society of Plastics Industry, paper bags use more energy and create more waste than plastic bags. Plastic bags require 40 per cent less energy to produce than paper bags and cause 70 per cent less air pollution, the group explained. Plus, plastic bags release as much as 94 per cent less waste into the water. Paper bags do, however, break down more quickly than plastic bags. They also do not strangle wildlife. What, then, should people do? While some experts have argued for placing a tax on plastic bags, others worry that the tax would cause people who make plastic bags to lose jobs. Some people also worry that making plastic bags more expensive (through taxes) would increase landfill waste because stores would start using paper bags again. Another possible solution would be to use biodegradable plastic bags, a technology that has recently improved. "Biodegradable" means that the bags naturally break down, like, for example, a banana peel does when you leave it outside. Perhaps the simplest solution for now, however, is to pack groceries in reusable bags, such as cloth tote bags. National Geographic Kids News ____________________________________________________ Bulging waistlines cause for concern The world is getting bigger - not the planet itself, but many of its people. In the developed world, from Australia to Europe to the United States, waistlines are bulging. People weigh more than ever before. Even children are joining the ranks of the obese (overweight) in record numbers, and scientists are concerned. "It's pretty obvious we have a problem here," says Ross Brownson. He's an epidemiologist at the St. Louis University School of Public Health in Missouri, USA. Stopping the obesity epidemic is one of Brownson's major goals. And he's not alone. As part of the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Prevention of Obesity in Children and Youth, Brownson is one of 19 experts in the United States who recently released a report called 'Preventing Childhood Obesity: Health in the Balance'. The report proposes ways to keep the nation's youth from getting fatter and fatter. The best solution, the experts say, is to get parents, schools, communities, governments, and kids themselves involved in tackling the problem together. To see if someone is seriously overweight, doctors use a mathematical formula that takes a person's height and weight and spits out a number called the Body Mass Index (BMI). They then compare the person's BMI to those on a special chart. In adults, a BMI between 18.5 and 25 is normal, greater than 25 is overweight, and greater than 30 is obese. An adult who is 5 feet, 5 inches tall, for instance, would have to weigh 150 pounds to be overweight and 180 pounds to be obese. Childhood obesity is a little different. Age and whether the child is a boy or a girl makes a difference. To be considered obese, a kid has to be in the top five per cent of the BMI chart for his or her age. Over the last 10 years, obesity has become more than twice as common in children between the ages of 2 and 5 and in young people between the ages of 12 and 19. In the 6-to-11-year-old set, the rate has more than tripled.It isn't just that being overweight might make it harder for you to drag yourself out of bed or off a couch. Obesity can cause serious health problems. Science News for Kids |
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