Preserve the Planet

  • recipient: Wayne Township

WE, the residents of the Township of Wayne, petition the Township to rid plastic bags from all stores and plastic straws from all commercial establishments.
Plastic corrupts our planet on every landmass and ocean. Plastic is being discovered in arctic ice, while we continue to sip soda out of plastic straws which harm us and the environment in which we live. There is an absurd amount of plastics used in everyday life, and as a result, our environment is deteriorating.
The needless use of plastics has caused the death of one out of at least five sperm whales, which washed onto shore with 48.5 pounds of plastic, according to the World Wildlife Fund. In addition, 90% of all birds are found to have plastic in their stomachs (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the U.S state). The Royal Society Publishing wrote that the deepest recorded plastic item was a plastic bag at 10,898 m in the Mariana Trench. Eventually, plastic comes back in the form of microplastics to the food we eat, the animals we feed, and the crops we grow. "As of 2015, approximately 6300 metric tons of plastic waste had been generated, around 9% of which had been recycled, 12% was incinerated, and 79% was accumulated in landfills or the natural environment," American Association for the Advancement of Science writes. If we don't make swift efforts now, according to the Huffington Post nineteen billion pounds of plastic in our ocean is expected to double to thirty eight billion pounds by 2025.
After making so much progress banning plastic bags in the U.S, the COVID-19 crisis came along, allowing plastic bags to come back into our grocery stores indefinitely. Vox News states "[w]ith plastic production already projected to increase by 40 percent over the next decade, campaigners fear the pandemic could unravel hard-fought measures to pare back the 8 million metric tons of plastic that enters our oceans every year." With statistics like that, it's hard not to be troubled. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused the rash decision of delaying bans on plastic bags, and in some cases, stores banned reusable bags. The concern we had about reusable bags carrying the virus wasn't misplaced, but we need to get back to the way things were before permanent damage begins. "A study published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine found that the virus can survive up to 72 hours on stainless steel and plastic surfaces and on cardboard up to 24 hours. Reusable grocery bags are made of different materials, including woven polypropylene plastic, cotton and other cloth." In this study, we can actually see that the virus lives longer on plastic and steel rather than cloth bags. On October 19th of 2020, New York will restore it's ban on plastic bags. According to World Resources Institute, as of 2019, 127 countries have already taken action on creating a policy to regulate plastic bags. So what are we waiting for? Why haven't we taken action?
We declare that Wayne Township must fully rid itself of all plastic and paper bags in stores and plastic straws in commercial establishments before April 22nd 2021, Earth Day.

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