The average time a person uses a plastic grocery bag is about 12 minutes.
After being tossed in the garbage, it makes its way to a dump or possibly the ocean, where it will slowly bio degrade for 500 years.
But the plastic never really goes away. It breaks down into tiny fragments called microplastics that can carry toxins and enter our bloodstreams.
If the world fails reduce its plastic consumption our oceans are in danger of degrading into a toxic plastic soup.
Kroger, America’s second-largest retailer, just took a huge step to reduce the country's plastic consumption.
On Thursday, August 23, the company announced it would stop providing plastic checkout bags to its customers by 2025.
“The plastic shopping bag’s days are numbered,” its CEO, Rodney McMullen, wrote in a USA Today op-ed.
Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for New York Times.
The company’s goal is to transition its customers over to using reusable shopping bags.
Kroger owns nearly 2,800 stores in 35 states and the District of Columbia, including: Cala Foods, City FoodsCo, Fred Meyer Stores, Fry's, Metro Market, Pick 'n Save, Ralphs, Food 4 Less, and Smith's Food and Drug.
According to Kroger, the ban would eliminate 123 million pounds of garbage sent to landfills each year. This would quadruple the amount it currently saves through recycling.
“Our customers have told us it makes no sense to have so much plastic only to be used once before being discarded – And they’re exactly right,” McMullen wrote.
Kroger’s announcement comes at a time when state and local governments are considering legislation to either ban or protect plastic grocery bags.
California and Hawaii have banned single-use plastic grocery bags, while Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, and Wisconsin have enacted laws to prevent local governments from enacting bans.
Plastic bag facts:
- 100 billion plastic bags are used by Americans every year which require 12 million barrels of oil to manufacture. Tied together, they would reach around the Earth’s equator 773 times!
- Nearly 2 million single-use plastic bags are distributed worldwide every minute.
- The average American family takes home almost 1,500 plastic shopping bags a year.
- 100,000 marine animals are killed by plastic bags annually.
Plastic bag bans have been proven to reduce plastic litter and ocean pollution.
A plastic bag tax levied in Ireland in 2002 has reportedly led to a 95% percent reduction in plastic bag litter in the country. In 2011, San Jose, California banned plastic bags, resulting in 89% percent reduction in bags found in the storm drains, 60% in the creeks and rivers, and 59% in city streets and neighborhoods.
The California ban, which took effect in late 2016, is already yielding positive results. According to the Los Angeles Times, “Plastic bags (both the banned and the legal variety) accounted for 3.1% of the litter collected from the state's beaches during the 2017 Coastal Cleanup Day, down from to 7.4% in 2010."
How you can help
Even if your local grocery store still hands out bags, you can reduce your own plastic consumption by bringing your own reusable one. Not only will you reduce your own waste, but you’ll be a good example to fellow shoppers and may cause them to rethink habits.
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via 
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
At least it wasn't Bubbles. 
You just know there's a person named Whiskey out there getting a kick out of this. 
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.