Lake Zurich Middle School South students have their say

The following are "Letters to the Editor" written by Lake Zurich Middle School South seventh-graders.

In the letters, they encourage people to stop using plastic bags and use polypropylene reusable bags instead.

The letters are designed to create awareness about the use of plastic bags and to create awareness about their newly formed company, Earthly Eagles.

Only YOU can make a difference

It bugs me that people aren't paying attention to how much paper and plastic bags we use per year.

As part of Clean up Australia day, approximately 500,000 plastic bags were picked up on the first day alone! In 2001, for example, Ireland was using 1.2 billion plastic bags annually. That's about 316 bags per person. Right now you might be saying "well then just switch to paper bags," but paper bags aren't without their share of the problem. Paper as you all know is made from trees, so that has a huge impact already. Also when paper is reduced to waste, they produce 70 times more air pollutants.

Well if paper hurts the environment and plastic isn't any better, what do we use? Reusable bags. Reusable bags last longer than paper or plastic.

We have started a company here at Middle School South and sell reusable bags. Our bags are recycling-friendly and last up to two years, but even if you don't want to buy them from us there are many other reusable bags you can use to help the environment. If you're still thinking about using plastic bags, put this into consideration -- even though we have landfills for plastic bags and other garbage, plastic never fully decomposes, it just reduces itself into little tiny toxic particles. Also the petroleum used to make 14 bags could drive a car a mile!

To sum up, only you, the readers of this letter, can make a difference in the world. Stopping or simply reducing our paper and plastic bag use can make a big difference in our world. Please help, because you'll be doing something nice for everyone.

Nick Stuart

It's time to help the environment

Did you know plastic bags kill animals and waste energy? Approximately 1 million sea birds and 100,000 sea mammals die each year from plastic bags. Dolphins follow the plastic bags and eat them thinking they are jelly fish. This leads to internal blockage and death. Many die after being entangled in plastic bags.

Also, plastic bags waste the important resources like oil, which reach into the millions of barrels of oil to make plastic bags. The amount of oil used to make 14 bags can power one car for a mile.

Polypropylene-made reusable bags take up less space and less energy than plastic bags. First, they are reusable and recyclable so even after using it for as long as possible you can still recycle it. They don't fill up landfills. Lastly they don't use up oil as much as plastic bags and last way longer and are recyclable. So reusable bags take up less landfill space, are recyclable, use less oil and last longer.

I hope you can see my reasoning about the use of plastic bags and what they do to the environment and how reusable bags change that. I think it's time for all of us to help our environment and recycle and we need to start by using reusable bags.

Alex Verde

The solution is to recycle, recycle

There are so many things that destroy our planet -- one of which is plastic bags.

Plastic bags are made of oil, which we use for our cars. If we keep using these plastic bags, the price of gas will go up. The usage of plastic bags consume millions of gallons of oil that could be used for fuel and heating. Our landfills are becoming so large over the years that we now need to take action; we need to put a stop to this and save our planet. If we stop using plastic bags we can save the Earth and our Environment.

If you want to know what an alternative is to using plastic bags, it is using reusable and recyclable bags. By using these reusable and recyclable bags you can help save the Earth. These bags do not use oil when they are made. They also do not waste oil when they are being melted back into regular plastic. The reusable bags hold up to 35 pounds while plastic bags only hold 5 pounds. All of the reusable bags are made from reusable products that save the Earth and will help the environment.

What should people do if they want to take action? People should always recycle and use recycled products. I think that we should have a law that states: "We are now banning the excessive use of plastic in all stores from ..." I think that if we take action now we can help save global warming and help save the Earth.

Stephanie Klein

Bags are harmful and a waste

Plastic bags are very harmful to the environment and are merely just a waste of materials.

Plastic bags take up to 1,000 years to decompose. During those 1,000 years the bags go through a process called photo-degradable, where the plastic is broken down into toxic particles that contaminate the soil and water. They also waste a lot of oil that could be used to fuel cars. In fact, 14 plastic bags can fuel a car for 1 mile. We make almost 500 billion bags each year so we could fuel thousands of cars by not making anymore plastic bags. As an alternative we should use reusable bags.

Reusable bags are the bags of the future. They are made of polypropylene, which is recycled plastic, and that reduces the amount of plastic and oil. Reusable bags are also much stronger than plastic bags. A good size reusable bag can hold up to 35 pounds. So reusable bags are the bags of the future.

People everywhere should use reusable bags, too. Villages should hand out reusable bags just like they hand out recycling bins. It's not what the reusable bags can do to help the Earth, it's what you can do to help the Earth.

Jerry Nigro

Lake Zurich should get involved, too

In our world, plastic bags are useful for when we go shopping and we have to carry items back to our car. However, did you know that up to one trillion, that's 1,000,000,000,000, plastic bags are consumed every year worldwide, or that plastic bags are harmful to our environment?

Well, they are and we can help the environment by using reusable bags. Did you know that according to cleangreenbags.com, sea turtles, whales and dolphins are among sea animals being directly affected by plastic waste products, often mistaking plastic bags for food, "causing slow and painful deaths to these animals over a prolonged period of time." Also more than 100,000 animals are being killed by the waste of plastic bags.

If we use reusable bags, we can help a lot. Most reusable bags are made from recycled products. Also, plastic bags can rip easily, especially if there is too much weight in it! But reusable bags can hold more pounds than plastic bags, and they can last about two years or more!

We can all help if people use recyclable bags. Or we can make a law that it is illegal to give plastic bags out at stores for your groceries. We should give them paper bags instead of plastic! The village of Lake Zurich can also hand out reusable bags to people through out the town. As you can see, plastic bags are harmful to the environment, but we can all help by using reusable bags!

Jen Jakobi

Other towns may join banning bags

Plastic bags are killing the Earth! They take up a lot of space in landfills, and take a thousand years to decompose. Since the plastic bags are made from oil, eventually, the Earth will run out of this natural resource. Then, how will we make our plastic bags?

Sometimes landfills get so overused that they have to dump the plastic bags in the ocean. Not only is that bad for the environment, but sometimes sea creatures think the plastic is another creature smaller than them, and they try to eat it. They will get sick and die, or even choke on it.

Reusable bags will help save the environment, because they can last for two years. The bags are not made from oil, they are made from polypropylene. The reusable bags are stronger than plastic bags, and can hold up to 35 pounds. The bags can be used for other things than grocery shopping, such as going to the beach.

We should all use reusable bags, because it will help save the environment. We should propose a law to banish plastic bags from stores, since they pollute the Earth, and they take the lives of sea creatures.

Hopefully, if we started with banning plastic bags in one store, and then one town, and then one city, and then the one country, we could make it all the way up to banning plastic bags from the world!

Robin Knickerbocker

Please reduce, reuse and recycle

All those bags being given out each day are wrecking the world's environment.

Most plastic bags are made from non-renewable natural resources. One of the non-renewable resources is petroleum. Since all that petroleum is being used for plastic bags, the environment is being ruined, which leads to humans raising oil expenses. It takes 1,000 years for just one plastic bag to decompose, and 450 years if the bag is in lakes, rivers or oceans.

Reusable bags are a good alternative to plastic and paper bags. They are a good alternative because if you keep reusing bags to carry items in it, not as much petroleum will be used to make plastic bags. By using reusable bags, it saves all the world's natural resources like trees, petroleum and much more! Reusable bags reduce waste and pollution from the earth.

The thing that our area needs to do is to ban plastic and paper bags, then buy reusable bags to help the environment. If everyone will reuse and reduce, the earth would be a better place for natural resources to develop. So just use reusable bags and reduce, reuse and recycle!

Danielle Jones

Reusable shopping bags are a solution

There is nothing that harms the environment more than plastic bags.

Plastic bags take up 14 to 28 percent of the room in all the landfills, they take 1,000 years to decompose, they kill marine life, and one trillion plastic bags are used every year worldwide.

Did you know that the energy that makes 14 bags is the same amount of energy to drive a car a mile? That can be so easily prevented.

There is another alternative from plastic. Reusable bags. They are better than plastic because the reusable bags hold a lot more weight than the plastic bags. The reusable bags can hold 35-40 pounds of weight. The bags are made up of a special material called polypropylene.

Polypropylene is weather proof, doesn't take nearly as much energy to make, and they will last you two years with weekly use, whereas plastic you would use them once them throw them away. These bags are low cost, lightweight, washable and recyclable. These bags really are the only way to go.

The reason to my letter is not to inform you about these bags but to encourage you to take part in saving our planet. There are many ways to help the Earth -- reusable bags only one of them; I propose that the all stores in the Chicagoland area ban the use of plastic bags. Instead they should either encourage their shoppers to convert to reusable and or switch to paper bags.

Fiona Rolfes

Plastic bags cost you gas money

When ever I go to the grocery store and I see people leaving with 20 bags and only two things in each bag it makes me so mad. It makes me mad because the plastic bags you get at a grocery store are not biodegradable, unless you think a thousand years isn't a lot. They fill our land fills and our oceans. Some animals in the ocean think the plastic bags are jelly fish and they suffocate from it. Not, to mention all the natural resources we use to make them, like oil. I often wonder why people don't just buy reusable bags.

Reusable bags, unlike plastic bags, can be reused and they are made of recycled materials. They last approximately two years. That is a lot longer then how long plastic bags last. Reusable bags can also hold a lot more than plastic and paper bags. Some can hold up to 35 pounds. Also when you think about it, if everyone used reusable bags instead of plastic bags you could save a lot of money on gas. We could lower the gas prices because we take up a lot of gas making plastic bags. Who doesn't want lower gas prices?

So, now is the time to take action and buy reusable bags. Take them to your grocery store and use them. And, when the bagger at the grocery store asks you if you would like plastic bags you could say, "No thanks I have reusable bags."

If you would like more information or have any questions e-mail earthlyeaglesclass@lz95.org

Samantha Esser

Plastic takes years to break down

According to www.cleangreenbags.com, some harmful things plastic bags cause are, they kill hundreds of thousands of animals yearly. They take up 9-12 percent of the space in landfills, and they get stuck in trees, causing them to go to waste and it takes more than 1,000 years for them to decompose.

Plastic bags even kill marine life animals because the animals mistake the bags for food and they choke or the bags do not digest through their systems. There are more than one trillion bags consumed every year. The use of plastic bags also raises the gas price.

Instead of plastic we should use reusable bags is because they conserve oil because plastic is made from oil. Not only do reusable bags conserve oil but they are stronger. They can hold 30-40 pounds and plastic bags usually can only hold 10-15 pounds. The use of these bags will also help lower the gas price. Just by using these bags you also save the lives of thousands of animals. That is why you should use reusable bags.

So in order to save the lives of animals, conserve oil and save trees we must start using reusable bags not only to help us but to help the environment and the ecosystem. That is what we should do in order to help save the earth.

Megan O'Connell

Save sea mammals with reusable bags

It frustrates me when I see people using plastic bags. They are harmful to the environment I encourage people to use reusable bags.

According to www.cleangreenbags.com, plastic bags cause slow and painful deaths to the hundreds of thousands of whales, dolphins, sea turtles and other marine animals by mistaking the bags for food. Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed.

That comes out to more than one million per minute. Plastic takes up to 1,000 years to decompose, which will take up a lot of space in landfills.

Reusable bags are a good alternative to plastic bags. Reusable bags conserve oil. For example, the Irish public consumed 1.2 billion plastic bags during 2001. In 2002, the Irish government saved 430,000 barrels of oil from not using plastic bags. In addition, the reusable bags can hold about 35 pounds. They hold way more weight than plastic bags. The reusable bags are made from recycled polypropylene.

There are some things you could do in order to conserve oil, and to save animals. The petroleum used to make 14 plastic bags can drive one car one mile. Instead of using plastic, you should use reusable bags.

Banning stores from the use of bags would be a great idea. It would conserve oil and would save millions of marine animals.

Danielle Bendix

Billion, trillion bags are being used

You may not know this but plastic bags are more harmful than you think.

Plastic bags are made with oil and gas is made with some oil, too. So every time you use a plastic bag, the gas price goes up. Also, paper and plastic bags use up our landfills. When we use these plastic bags they go in the landfills and kill thousands of mammals every year.

Experts estimated that 5 billion to 1 trillion plastics bags are used every year. According to http://environment.about.com/od/recycling/a/reusablebags.htm, they say that in Japan 300 billion bags are consumed each year! Hundreds of thousands of whales, dolphins and mammals are dying every year eating what they think is their food but really is crumbled-up plastic. Americans throw away millions of barrels of petroleum, contribute to global warming, reduce oil supplies and raise fuel costs.

Reusable bags are very good to our environment because the bags are made from recycled plastic called polypropylene. When you use these bags you can reduce the plastic in landfills. 80 percent of plastics and paper bags take up landfills.

Local, states and other countries are starting to ban plastics bags and now paper bags from San Francisco, starting in New Jersey, and other states, places and cities. We want people all over the world start to use our bags made from recycled products. In 1960, 6.3 billion pounds of plastic and plastics bags were produced in the USA. Each year more and more pounds of plastics build up every year.

So help save the environment by using reusable bags.

Ariana Mulle