Plastic bag

Plastic bags are often made from polyethylene, which consists of long chains of ethylene monomers. Ethylene is derived from natural gas and petroleum.
Bag manufacturers  provide several types of echo friendly bags.
Patent applications relating to the production of plastic shopping bags can be found dating back to the early 1950s in the United States and Europe, but these refer to composite constructions with handles fixed to the bag in a secondary manufacturing process.
The lightweight shopping bag as we know it today is the invention of Swedish engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin.Bag manufacturers also include this.
Celloplast was a well established producer of cellulose film and a pioneer in plastics processing. The company's patent position gave it a virtual monopoly on plastic shopping bag production and the company set up manufacturing plants across Europe and in the US. However, other companies saw the attraction of the bag, too, and US petrochemicals group Mobil overturned the Celloplast US patent in 1977. The Dixie Bag Company of College Park, Georgia, owned and operated by Jack W. McBride ("The Bagman") was one of the first companies to exploit this new opportunity to bring convenient products to all major shopping stores. McBride's Dixie Bag Company, as well as Houston Poly Bag and Capitol Poly were instrumental in the manufacturing, marketing and perfecting of this bag by the early 1980s. Kroger, a Cincinnati based grocery chain, agreed to try this innovation.
Plastic shopping bags are commonly manufactured by blown film extrusion.[citation needed]
Plastic shopping bags are made of polyethylene. This can be low-density, resin identification code, or most often high-density, resin identification code. Most plastic bags are derived from natural gas.

Biodegradable materials-

Although not in use today, plastic shopping bags could be made from Polylactic acid (PLA) a biodegradable polymer derived from lactic acid.This is one form of vegetable-based bioplastic. Bags can also be made from degradable polyethylene film. Most degradable bags do not readily decompose in a sealed landfill and represent a possible contaminant to plastic recycling operations.

Environmental concerns-

According to Vincent Cobb a seller of reusable bags, each year millions of discarded plastic shopping bags end up as litter in the environment when improperly disposed of.The same properties that have made plastic bags so commercially successful and ubiquitous—namely their low weight and resistance to degradation—have also contributed to their proliferation in the environment. Due to their durability, plastic bags can take up to 100 years to decompose.As they slowly decompose, plastic bags break into tiny pieces and leech toxic chemicals into soils, lakes, rivers, and oceans.

Reuse and recycling-

Heavy duty plastic shopping bags are suitable for reuse as reusable shopping bags. Lighter weight bags are often reused as bin bags (trash bags) or to pick up pet faeces. All types of plastic shopping bag can be recycled into new bags where effective collection schemes exist.
Since internet rumours started to claim that the Environmental Protection Agency had reported only 1% of plastic bags were recycled, significant attention resulted in a 700% growth in the recycling industry as new capacity led to a 7% rate.

Taxes-

The plastic bag levy introduced in Ireland in 2002, resulted in a reduction of over 90% in the issuing of plastic shopping bags;the total reduction in plastic bag use was less than that due to increased use of commercial trash bin-liners in place of the free shopping bags previously used by many consumers. Sales of bin-liners have increased by 400% according to one industry source.The "ban on free plastic bags" in China introduced in 2008 resulted in a reduction by two thirds.In the United States, the five-cent tax levied on plastic bags in Washington, DC in 2010 resulted in a decrease in consumption from 22.5 million to 3 million bags in the first month alone.A study issued by the non-profit group American for Tax Reform found that the District of Columbia’s five-cent bag tax had an disproportionate impact on the city’s poor and cost the city over 100 jobs.

Recycling-

Many states and cities in the United States have approached bag litter and landfill with a more practical approach in recycling laws such as California, New York, Chicago, Delaware, Baltimore , and many other cities and states.Bag manufacturers