Mat-Su Bag-it Committee keeps pushing forward

PALMER — “In spite of people’s efforts not to litter, plastic bags act like kites, and get blown out of dumpsters, people’s garbage cans, and escape when being loaded onto garbage trucks on a windy day,” stated Carol Montgomery, co-chair of the Mat-Su’s Bag-It Committee. “All we have to do is look around at the environment to realize this problem is not going to go away, but will just get worse unless we do something.”

The Bag It Committee, a committee of the Matsu Borough Recycling Coalition, began a survey late last fall to gauge support for controlling the use of plastic bags in the Valley. She said the group’s purpose is to raise public awareness of the hazards of single-use plastic grocery bags. Volunteers hit some of the larger retail outlets as well as Mat-Su landfill transfer sites. To date, more than 1,137 responses have been collected.

“Our first step has been to determine public awareness of the problem, and gauge support for efforts to control plastic bag use. But we are still seeking public input. It’s difficult to interrupt hurried shoppers outside of a store in the cold, so we’ll probably rely on the online results at this point,” Montgomery said. “ Our second step is to a public awareness campaign. We would like to promote practical solutions that we can all do right now to reduce the number of plastic bags floating around… So far, a majority of responders (65 percent) at all the sites we surveyed support some effort to control plastic bags. “

Montgomery noted there are more than 101,000 residents in the Mat-Su. She explained if each resident continues using five plastic bags a week, a number she considers conservative, more than 26.5 million bags will be added to the borough’s environment annually. One place to begin to solve this problem, Montgomery said, is to reduce the number of plastic bags consumers use. She said recycling bags is helpful, but estimates show that only three percent of plastic bags are returned for recycling, and there are a limited number of recycled products that can be made from them.

“If 3 percent gets recycled, that leaves 25,473,000 bags per year that will either escape into our environment or take up valuable real estate in our landfill,” said Montgomery. “And that’s just for one year.”

Montgomery said consumers need to think before walking out of the store with their items sitting in plastic.

“Do you really need a bag to carry one or two items from the store to your car?” Montgomery asked. “An even better way to help out is to bring your own bag.”

Montgomery said reusable bags are more sturdy, have a greater holding capacity, are easier to carry and don’t flop around in your car.

“Once you get used to bringing your own bag, you will never want to go back to using these flimsy annoying plastic bags,” said Montgomery.

Montgomery said many Alaskan communities already have regulations to control damage caused by plastic bags. Cordova, Bethel and Hooper Bay have banned plastic bags, and many villages across the state have similar regulations.

Additionally, Montgomery notes plastic bag litter actually kills as some animals ingest it.

No one knows exactly why caribou and reindeer are so attracted to plastic bags, Montgomery said. She said both the Williams Reindeer Farm and Matanuska Experiment Farm in Palmer discovered this first-hand, after necropsies revealed plastic bag ingestion was the cause of death for several of their animals.

“Animals can’t digest plastic, so it accumulates and obstructs their digestive system,” said Montgomery.

The Experiment Farm is in a unique position to observe this problem directly. Surgically created fistulas allow researchers a direct portal into the digestive system of their research caribou. Dr. Bill Collins of the state’s Department of Fish and Game is on record stating he continually pulls plastic bags out of the rumen of caribou. Some wads of plastic in their gut, Montgomery noted, are as large as footballs.

She said bags continue flying into local pastures throughout the year because the Valley is a windy place. In order to prevent further losses, personnel from Williams Reindeer Farm patrol their fields recovering plastic bags before the animals eat them. In spite of those efforts, Montgomery noted the farm lost three reindeer since 2010.

“We can only wonder what happens to caribou and other ruminants in the wild that do not have these protections,” said Montgomery. “Those bags that avoid being eaten by animals, or being snagged by trees end up in our watershed, and eventually the ocean, where they create even more hazards for marine animals who, like caribou, eat it in place of food.”

She said another hazardous fact about plastics is that it never biodegrades.

“(Plastic) just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces of petroleum chemicals, soaking up other toxic contaminants, such as heavy metals in the process. Then it enters the food chain,” Montgomery said. “The smaller the particles, the smaller the animals are that feed on it,”

Montgomery cited a 2015 study in the northeast Pacific Ocean which found small particles of plastic in the plankton ate by native salmon. She said the study showed salmon were ingesting 2-7 particles of plastic per day just from feeding on the plankton.

“Who wants plastic in their salmon? I don’t think many people do,” she concluded.

To take the survey, point your browser to https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XH9KQ5B.