I don’t want plastic in food

My name is Maisie and I am in seventh grade at Louisville Middle School. I am really scared about what the world would be like for me with climate change and the plastic pollution problem. But there is something we can do today in Louisville to have an impact — charge a tax for disposable bags. Hundreds of other communities across the U.S. have implemented fees or taxes on bags. It works.

No matter how hard we try to recycle disposable plastic bags, they still litter our parks, roads, and streams. Plastic bags break down into smaller pieces of plastic, known as microplastics, that harm wildlife, get into our water, soils, and ultimately the food we eat. I was scared to learn plastic is in the food we eat.

Recycled plastic bags only get made into products requiring more plastic bags to be made from natural gas. Only a small percentage of bags are collected and recycled. Recycling will not help us out of this problem, but what will is a bag tax. The use of disposable bags declines as customers bring there own reusable bags or go without.