{"id":7376,"date":"2013-01-07T02:00:29","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T10:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blitransfer.wpengine.com\/?p=7376"},"modified":"2017-06-21T14:18:06","modified_gmt":"2017-06-21T19:18:06","slug":"plastic-bags-suffocating-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/2013\/01\/07\/plastic-bags-suffocating-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Plastic Bags Suffocating the World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Plastic bags are suffocating the world.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a pretty graphic description.\u00a0 Unfortunately, there&#8217;s a lot of truth to it.\u00a0 Learnstuff.com put together this infographic illustrating the problem.<\/p>\n<p>Plastic bags seem small &#8211; and they&#8217;re so thin &#8211; how could they be causing such a problem?\u00a0 It&#8217;s not that any one of us is covering the ocean with plastic.\u00a0 It&#8217;s that each of us is contributing to the 46000 pieces of plastic floating in each square mile of ocean and creating those <a title=\"Atlantic Ocean's Plastic Patch Rivals Pacific Garbage Gyre\" href=\"http:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/2010\/02\/25\/atlantic-oceans-plastic-patch-rivals-pacific-garbage-gyre\/\">gigantic ocean garbage patches<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The economic costs of the problem are also astonishing.\u00a0 Cities spend $0.17 per bag to clean them up from the streets (<a title=\"Los Angeles Plastic Bag Ban\" href=\"http:\/\/ecolocalizer.com\/2012\/05\/30\/california-los-angeles-plastic-bag-ban\/\" target=\"_blank\">caught in trees or fences<\/a>, you&#8217;ve seen them) and dispose of them.\u00a0 According to the infographic, when Washington, D.C. added a $0.05 per bag surcharge, plastic bag use dropped by 19.5 million.\u00a0 That saved the city $3.3 million in clean-up costs.\u00a0 It also kept nearly 20 million plastic bags per year from ending up in the ocean.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.learnstuff.com\/suffocating-the-world\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.learnstuff.com\/assets\/Suffocating-the-World.gif\" alt=\"Suffocating-the-World\" width=\"550\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Photo<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plastic bags are suffocating the world.  It&#8217;s a pretty graphic description.  Unfortunately, there&#8217;s a lot of truth to it.  Learnstuff.com put together this infographic illustrating the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":7648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[23],"tags":[2854,1531,1682],"yst_prominent_words":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Suffocating-the-World.gif","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7376"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7376"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelivingideas.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=7376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}