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Kroger, nation’s largest grocery chain, eliminates plastic bags – CBS News

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Kroger, nation’s largest grocery chain, eliminates plastic bags – CBS News

Kroger, the nation's largest grocery chain, will phase out the use of plastic bags in its stores by 2025. The grocer orders about 6 billion bags each year.

Based in Cincinnati, Kroger operates 2,779 stores in 35 states and the District of Columbia, serving almost 9 million people daily through two dozen different grocery chains.

Kroger said Thursday that will start the project at its Seattle chain QFC, where it expects to be plastic-bag free by next year.

While I didn't think that much about plastic bags in the past, they are kind of a nuisance when you find them in the woods and flapping in the trees. It's certainly easy enough for them to blow away, and we really should be getting away from single-use plastics. Alas, I will probably have to start using my reusable bags -- and just dump my camp garbage in a bucket, and wash it out form time to time.

There’s just no getting away from microplastic contamination | Ars Technica

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There’s just no getting away from microplastic contamination | Ars Technica

Every year, millions of tonnes of plastic are produced. In 2016, this figure was estimated to be around 335 million tonnes. We have no idea where most of this ends up. The amounts that are recovered in recycling plants and landfill don't match the amount being produced. Some of it stays in use, sometimes for decades, which explains part of the discrepancy. An estimated 10 percent ends up in the oceans. Although these numbers could change with further research, there's still a gap.

Wherever that plastic is ending up, we know that it's breaking down over time, disintegrating into micro particles less than 5mm in size, and some even breakdown to the nanoscale at less than one micrometer. (For context, the micrometer is a unit that's often used to discuss bacteria and cells—the human sperm head is around 5 micrometers in length.) The effect that these particles will have on a global scale as they continue to accumulate is not even remotely understood.

Why Southeast Asia Is Flooded With Trash From America And Other Wealthy Nations | HuffPost

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Why Southeast Asia Is Flooded With Trash From America And Other Wealthy Nations | HuffPost

"A canary-yellow Walmart clearance tag poked out from one of the dirty heaps. Wrappers and packages from American products were visible nearby. These items had likely traveled 10,000 miles to this unmarked and apparently unauthorized dumpsite in a quiet industrial neighborhood in northwestern Malaysia. "

"Ad hoc dumps like this one, teeming with foreign waste, have popped up across Southeast Asia in recent months ― each an ugly symbol of a global recycling system that regional activists and politicians have described as unjust, inequitable and broken. In January and February, HuffPost visited several of these sites in Malaysia to see what really happens to much of the plastic trash that originates in the U.S. and other wealthy nations."