Impacts on the Environment

Consumption of natural resources in production

In order to produce the 3 billion plastic bags used in Singapore in 2011, 37 million kilograms of crude oil, and 12 million kilograms of natural gas was required!

Other plastic disposables certainly also consume a huge amount of natural resources in production.

 

Consumption of natural resources in disposal 

Plastic bags are often only used once or twice, and then used as trash bags for rubbish disposal. However, the disposal of plastic bags requires a lot more energy and resources too.

In Singapore, our waste is mainly incinerated in one of our four waste-to-energy plants. The incineration ash is brought to our only landfill, Pulau Semakau. When plastic waste is burned, it results in the emission of greenhouse gases like Carbon Dioxide and Methane, and very toxic compounds such as Nitrogen Oxides, Sulphur Oxides and Hydrogen Fluoride.

Singapore’s incineration plants filter harmful gases before they are released into the atmosphere. However, it requires a great amount of energy. Incinerating plastic waste required an energy input of 252 megajoules per tonne of waste, (Khoo & Tan, 2010, p. 341) which would power 1.17 million 60W lightbulbs for an hour! Though Singapore’s incineration plants do recover a large portion of the used energy by using the heat generated to create electricity, it is unclear whether the energy generated offsets the energy needed for the full life cycle of a plastic bag. (Shah, 2013)

 

Kills and harms marine life

When plastic bags are disposed improperly, plastic bags end up contaminating and floating about the oceans. Marine life like sea turtles, dolphins and sea turtles often get injured or killed as a result. They may get entangled in them, or they may mistake the plastic bags for food and ingest them. For instance, sea turtles often mistake plastic bags for their favourite food—Jellyfish. Consequently, the plastic bags and other plastic contaminants in the oceans choke up the digestive system of the marine animals that ingest them, leading to great pain, starvation and eventually death.

 

Taking up space in landfills

In 2016, 822,200 tonnes of plastic waste was generated in Singapore. However, only 7% of the plastic waste was recycled! As a result, 762,700 tonnes of plastic waste was disposed (National Environment Agency, 2016)—which were probably mostly incinerated and sent as ash residue to Pulau Semakau—Singapore’s last landfill which limited space is being filled up quickly.

Though there is no statistics on how much of the plastic waste is accounted for by plastic bags, the over 3 billion plastic bags used annually is likely to account for a significant portion of the plastic waste generated and disposed.