Investigating the environemtal impacts from plastic bags Research Paper

Investigating the envir mavenmtal impacts from pliant bags - Research Paper ExampleThe Case Against Plastic Bags The manufacturing process requires 12 million barrels of anele per year, creating over 100 billion plastic shopping bags (Gamerman). With only about a 5% cycle rate (inspiration green), the landfills will overflow with bags that are not recycled or reused. A number of wildlife groups report toss away plastic bags are eaten by a variety of land and sea creatures with fatal effects. These concerns and other take a shit the larger argument for surroundal stewardship The Tragedy of the Commons (Hardin, 1968) and TANSTAAFL (Dolan, 1971). Both of these writings warn of the economic lax rider problem that is the bane of environmental stewardship The free rider problem refers to the polluting or overuse of the ingrained resources since no tax or fee is associated with dumping. The tragedy of the commons is the overuse and over skimming of the common land. Since each drover wanted to maximize profits, they exploited the free grazing land by adding more and more cattle. Soon, the grazing land was destroyed, unable to recover and nobody could feed their cattle. The herdsmen who believed in proper stewardship either went broke or joined the others in selfish overuse. Pollution and contamination work the same way. Traditionally, industry would dump fuck up into rivers, bury toxins on site and spew horrid smoke into the air because the water, land and air were considered a common good and companies could dump waste at no cost. With the Environmental Protection mode and State environmental departments cracking down on polluters with fines and criminal penalties, this practice has abated, but does continue to a lesser extent. The neo-tragedy argument includes recycling and the after-effects of environmentally resilient products. TANSTAAFL (Dolan) originated in science fiction by Heinlein the acronym instrument there aint no such thing as a free luncheon. D olan adopted the acronym in order to present his economic argument that pollution rights should be sold as an economic good. A calculation of the maximum mass of each pollutant potentially and immediately sorbed into the environment would lead to an inventory of polluting rights. These rights would be sold at auction to industries with a waste disposal problem. another(prenominal) constituents would have to design non-polluting mechanisms to compete. Obviously, the cost of pollution would be set by the market. (Dolan) The money raised with the auction plus fines on pollution cheaters would pay for remediation. The plastic bag opponents take this argument one step further and assign responsibility for individual litter and recycling to the manufacturer. As much as 4% of trash in landfills consists of plastic bags. (DOE) As consumers use more and more plastic bags, as yet to contain trash, the landfills will take longer to naturally reclaim the natural resource of land. In an inter est study, small communal group, the Hutterites, were observed. (Hardin, 3) The finding was that when the colony size approaches 150, individuals begin to under-contribute and over-demand. Smaller groups manage by bewilder however, larger groups lose that capacity. The commonistic approach of the Hutterites loses manageability in larger