Environmental Impact Of Plastic Bags

Environmental Impact Of Plastic Bags Plastic bags are a true menace to our ecosystems and our waste diversion goals. Barely recyclable, almost all of the 400 plastic bags used per second in the state are discarded. Once discarded, they either enter our landfills or our marine ecosystem. People think of plastic bags as being free. Instead, they actually cost taxpayers millions every year. In San Francisco alone, City officials estimate that they spend $8.5 million annually to deal with plastic bag litter. That equates to around 17 cents for every bag distributed in the city. Additionally: It costs the state $25 million annually to manage plastic bag pollution. Public agencies in California spend in excess of $303 million annually in litter abatement. Southern California cities have spent in excess of $1.7 billion in meeting Total Maximum Daily Loads for trashed in impaired waterways. Cities and recyclers spend incalculable amounts removing plastic bags from their recyclables stream, where they jam machinery and add to the manual labor costs of recycling. At least 267 species have been scientifically documented to be adversely affected by plastic marine debris and it is estimated to kill over 100,000 marine mammals and turtles each year. Plastic bags are considered especially dangerous to sea turtles, who may mistake them for jellyfish, a main food source. 86% of all known species of sea turtles have had reported problems of entanglement or ingestion of marine debris. Plastic bags that enter our marine environment eventually break down into small fragments. Plastic bags, which are made from natural gas or oil, consume an energy equivalent of thousands of barrels of oil a day just to meet Californias consumption. Numerous recent international, national, state and local reports have called for the banning or drastic reduction of plastic bags due to their environmental damage. Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environmental Program, recently said there is simply zero justification for manufacturing [plastic bags] any more, anywhere. Home / Plastic Bags / Why Plastic Bags are a Problem Why Plastic Bags are a Problem Plastic bags are popular with consumers and retailers as they are a functional, lightweight, strong, cheap, and hygienic way to transport food and other products. Approximately 6.9 billion plastic bags are consumed annually in Australia: 6 billion of these are high density polyethylene (HDPE), such as supermarket singlet bags or supermarket checkout bags. 0.9 billion are low density polyethylene (LDPE), such as boutique bags. 67% of HDPE 25% of LDPE bags are imported with the remainder locally produced. There are two major environmental problems associated with our use of plastic bags. Firstly, plastic bags are one of the most damaging forms of litter. At least 80 million plastic bags end up as litter on our beaches, streets and parks each year While they are estimated to only be 2% of the litter stream, they have a significant environmental impact because they can take up to 1,000 years to break down. Their persistence in the environment means that they can entangle and harm marine life and other animals. In fact, the World Wide Fund for Nature estimates that more than 100,000 whales, seals, turtles, and birds die every year as a result of plastic bags. For example, on 24 August 2000, a Brydes whale died in Trinity Bay, 2 km from central Cairns. An autopsy found that the whales stomach was tightly packed with plastic, including supermarket bags, food packages, bait bags, three large sheets of plastic, and fragments of garbage bags. There was no food in its stomach. When the dead animal decays, the plastic bags are freed to be re-ingested by other animals in years to come. On land, plastic bag litter can block drains and trap birds. They also kill livestock. One farmer near Mudgee NSW, carried out an autopsy on a dead calf and found 8 plastic bags in its stomach. The loss of this calf cost the farmer around $500. Cleaning up this litter is expensive. Australian local and state governments spend over $200 million a year picking up litter (all forms). Source: Federal Department of Environment HYPERLINK http://www.deh.gov.au/industry/waste/plastic-bags/HYPERLINK http://www.deh.gov.au/industry/waste/plastic-bags/Heritage website Secondly, the plastic shopping bag, a single use item, is a symbol of a wasteful society: 20 million Australians used 6.7 billion plastic checkout bags this year (down from 6.9 billion the previous year). Thats nearly 1 plastic bag per person per day or 345 bags per person per year. A persons use of a plastic checkout bag can be counted in minutes however long it takes to get from the shops to their homes. The amount of petroleum used to make one plastic bag would drive a car about 115 metres. The 6.9 billion plastic checkout bags we use every year is enough to drive a car 800 million kilometres or nearly 20,000 times around the world i.e. 4 round trips to the Sun. Less than 3% of Australias plastic bags are currently being recycled, despite recycling facilities being available at major supermarkets. Only an estimated 19% of the 3.7 billion plastic supermarket shopping bags handed out in Australia every year, are being reused by households as kitchen bin liners. In many council areas, plastic bags are the single main contaminant of kerbside recycling. Plastic bags are not free to consumers they are actually adding an estimated $173 million a year to Australias grocery bills. Source: Planet Ark While these facts paint a grim picture, an October 2003 Roy Morgan study showed that 87% of Australians were concerned about the impact plastic bags have on the environment. In addition, action is being taken to reduce the impact of plastic bags, for example: Coles Bay in Tasmania have successfully banned plastic checkout bags in all their retail stores. Under an agreement between the Federal Government and the Australian Retailers Association (ARA), retailers have until December 2004 to reduce their consumption of lightweight single use plastic checkout bags by 25%. This rises to 50% by December 2005. More and more people around the world are becoming aware of the environmental issues surrounding plastic bags. Considering their somewhat placid appearance, the impact of plastic bags on the environment can be devastating. Here are some facts about the environmental impact of plastic bags: Plastic bags cause over 100,000 sea turtle and other marine animal deaths every year when animals mistaken them for food The manufacture of plastic bags add tonnes of carbon emissions into the air annually In the UK, banning plastic bags would be the equivalent of taking 18,000 cars off the roads each year Between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year Approximately 60 100 million barrels of oil are required to make the worlds plastic bags each year Most plastic bags take over 400 years to biodegrade. Some figures indicate that plastic bags could take over 1000 years to break down. (I guess nobody will live long enough to find out!). This means not one plastic bag has ever naturally biodegraded. China uses around 3 billion plastic bags each day! In the UK, each person uses around 220 plastic bags each year Around 500,000 plastic bags are collected during Clean Up Australia Day each year. Clean Up Australia Day is a nationwide initiative to get as many members of the public to get out and pick up litter from their local areas. Unfortunately, each year in Australia approximately 50 million plastic bags end up as litter. Fortunately, some governments around the world are taking the initiative to deal with the environmental impact of plastic bags by either banning plastic bags or discouraging their usage. Under current city law, large supermarkets and chain drugstores, such as Safeway and Walgreens, only may provide three kinds of bags to customers at the checkout stand: recyclable paper bags, compostable plastic bags and reusable bags. All single-use disposable bags are banned under the old law. In the new law, Mirkarimi crafted a few exemptions, which include using plastic bags for produce or for garments. He is contemplating a companion piece to his legislation that would impose a 10-cent charge for paper bags. Currently, retailers dont charge for paper bags in San Francisco, though some, such as Whole Foods and Rainbow Grocery, give customers credit for using their own bags. Mirkarimi estimates that broadening the law would remove tens of millions more bags from the environment. Plastic bags are a clear example of excess run amok, he said. People dont necessarily realize the composition of the plastic bag or the consequences of the plastic bag. Theyre omnipresent. Shari Jackson, director of the Progressive Bag Affiliates of the American Plastics Council, said Mirkarimis proposed legislation would have unintended consequences, chiefly increasing the use of paper bags, which have their own environmental problems, and taking away jobs of people who manufacture the plastic bags

Domestic Violence Research Critique Essay

Introduction Domestic abuse is a problem in the USA, and the research article that I am critiquing is studying the effectiveness of screening for domestic abuse in health care pre-screening settings. Domestic abuse is a hard situation for the woman going through it and often times it’s a hard subject to discuss. In order to help women with this process it’s important that as health care providers we understand the complexities of domestic abuse and become educated on how to approach the situation with patients. Throughout this critique we will discuss how this protects the patient, how data was obtained, how the data was managed/analyzed, and how it was interpreted. Protection of Human Participants This study is ultimately helping promote awareness/protection to patients in a health care setting by addressing the possibility of domestic abuse in each situation. The study consisted of measuring the rate of domestic abuse in the presence and absence of screenings. The study also compared the outcomes of interventions with women with known abuse from a male with women not receiving interventions who have been abused. There is a need for women to be able to get to a safer place such as a physician’s office and discuss private matters so they don’t feel threatened. Most women have a hard time discussing any issues regarding domestic abuse they have had because they fear losing something they loved so deeply. Data The data that was pulled was from multiple sources; sources included research articles combined with survey results from different medical professionals. The research articles were used to formulate the questions presented in the survey handed out the medical professionals. The three questions presented were â€Å"Do women patients and health professionals find  screening for domestic violence acceptable? Do screening programs increase the identification of women who are experiencing domestic violence? Do interventions with women identified in healthcare settings improve outcomes?† (Ramsay, Richardson, Carter, Davidson, Feder 2002). According to the study most physicians and emergency care workers were not in favor of the screening. Women who were surveyed as to whether they think it would be helpful to be screened at their physician’s office were mostly in favor by 75%. Another study that researched an emergency department’s response to nurses screening for a history of abuse and 53% were in favor. Problems The lack of solid information and research articles led to more extraneous variables. The research articles in play had lack of information and quality information. There was no monitoring of the quality of items extracted from the information from the medical records, according to this research article. Also another variable would be women who have a hard time speaking up about domestic violence even if it did happen to them, they may not speak about it and it would be a low quality outcome. The article talked about how women who had been abused dealt with the pain of the abuse after and if they sought out help? Analysis of Data 85% of women found the screening in health care settings acceptable, which is positive in relation to the fact that women care about their safety. 2 surveys found that two thirds of health care providers and emergency room nurse were not in favor of screening for domestic abuse. The results of the data collected were hard to analyze because the collection of data gained for this research study wasn’t solid and there were a lot of different variables. At the time this research study was conducted there wasn’t a system of screening women for abuse. Findings/Interpretation In the year 2015 most hospital facilities add it to part of their admission screen. The findings in this quantitative research analysis didn’t support that outcome. Healthcare providers, according to the data in this study, weren’t agreeable to the benefits of having a screening for women for domestic abuse (Ramsay, Richardson, Carter, Davidson, Feder, 2002). There are holes in the data collected as far as to why the healthcare providers  felt like this wouldn’t benefit women. There are a lot of domestic abuse cases, and I believe these findings were proven wrong many years later due to the fact we prescreen men and women in our present hospital facilities. The limitations found by the researchers included improper research/data collection done by the researchers who wrote the articles referenced in this research analysis. The research presented will set other researchers on the path to find answers to this ongoing problem of domestic abuse. I believe that in t he future we will be more thoroughly trained on the signs and symptoms of abuse, and certain cue’s we as nurses can look for. As healthcare providers it’s important that we interject when we feel our patient is unsafe. Conclusion Domestic Abuse is unfortunately happening all around us in the USA. Using and building off research studies such as this quantitative research analysis will help us open our minds to different answers. According to this research study the women interviewed about if they think it’s a good idea to pre-screen for domestic abuse. This could have been skewed in a lot of ways, but one situation that makes the most sense is talking with your physician about this problem. Usually people consider physicians’ offices as a safe zone. As long as they don’t feel threatened they tend to open up a bit more. When the research study points to the health care providers that aren’t willing/or don’t want to do the pre-screening for domestic abuse, it makes you wonder if there were other factors involved in their interview process. This study was inconclusive in regards to lack of quality information from the stated research articles. The base of this research study led us to believe that pre-screenings for women being seen in a physician offices aren’t necessary. The research had obviously gone further than this article due to the fact we now pre-screen everyone in a hospital setting. Reference Ramsay, J., Richardson, J., Carter, Y. H., Davidson, L. L., & Feder, G. (2002). Should health professionals screen women for domestic violence? Systematic review. Bmj, 325(7359), 314.

Home Based Childcare Essay

Childminder must handle all information that she has on the child as confidential and should be shared only with the child’s parents and the child. It is essential to handle data about children and families in a confidential way, due to that they have a legal right to privacy. It is equally important that information should not be passed on without written approval of the parents or carer, because they have the right to give or deny their consent before the childminder may take certain action with respect to their child. For example the parents or carer approval is needed to discuss information about the children with professionals such us GP, health visitors or teachers. Therefore it is important also to get permission to share the child’s learning journey with other professionals. In second place confidentiality and data protection also means that all information about children and families should not discussed with a friend or other parents. Therefore there are only two sets of circumstances to share information: * Parents or cares gave the written approval for it. * It is essential to do so in the best of interest of the child, for example safeguarding or medical emergency. All information about children and families is sensitive. So that all documentation, reports, notes about the child should be kept in a safe place such, as in a filing cabinet, which can be locked, and not removed from the childminder’s home. Furthermore all information stored on computer must be password protected. In the same way photographs of the children can only be taken with the written consent of the parents and carers. Data protection Act exist to strike a balance between the rights of individuals to privacy and to use data for the purposes of the business. The purpose of data protection legislation is to make sure that the personal data is not processed without the knowledge of the individuals. The act of data protection introduced basic rules of registration for data users and right of access to that data for the individuals who are related to it. The childminders have data protection responsibilities. First of all they need to protect the children and their families and maintain sense of trust between parent and staff. Most important is that if they keep records of the children’s health, behaviour or development on the computer or takes digital photograph of the children, they â€Å"will be expected to register with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)† (ncma.org.uk, 2013). The points that I may include in my confidentiality and Date protection policy are: Confidentiality Policy * All parents receive a copy of my policies and procedures, which detail how I run my setting. * My certificate of registration is displayed and available to all parents. * I am aware of my responsibilities under the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000. * I maintain a record of parents’ and/or emergency contact details, the contact details of the child’s GP and appropriate signed consent forms. * If a child is identified as a child in need (section 17 of the Children Act 1989) I will, normally with the parent’s permission, give appropriate information to referring agencies. * I expect parents to inform me of any changes in the child’s home circumstances, care arrangements or any other change which may affect the child’s behaviour such as a new baby, parents’ separation, divorce, new partner or any bereavement. * All information shared will be kept confidential and will not be disclosed without the parents’ consent, except as required by law, for example, if there appears to be a child protection issue. Please see my Safeguarding Children policy. * I expect parents to keep private and confidential any sensitive information they may accidentally learn about my family, setting or the other children and families attending, unless it is a child protection issue. * Ofsted may require to my see records at any time. * Parents have the right to inspect all records about their child at any time. * All significant incidents are recorded in an incident book and will be shared and discussed with parents so that together we can work to resolve any issues. * As a registered provider I must notify Ofsted of any serious accidents, illnesses or injuries or the death of any child whilst in my care and any action I may have taken within 14 days of an incident occurring. * If I am in need of support or advice regarding a serious illness or incident involving a child in my care I may contact National Childminding Association who will log information regarding the incident with regard to their safeguarding policy. An NCMA designated officer will be assigned to my case and all the information given to them will be kept confidentially unless their appears to be a child protection issue which will be reported accordingly. * If an accident or incident involving a child in my care may result in an insurance claim I will contact my public liability insurance provider to discuss my case and be allocated a claim number. This may involve discussing details of the child in my care with a third party. * If I am using the National Childminding Association (NCMA) public liability insurance, the total life of the policy is 21 years and 4 months to enable the child to make a claim against the policy at a later date. Data Protection Policy * I am aware of my responsibilities under the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000. * If I keep records relating to individual children on my computer I will ask for the parent’s permission. The information will be securely stored for example, in password-protected files, to prevent viewing of the information by others with access to the computer. Backup files will be stored on [insert method, for example, a memory stick, DVD or CD] which will be locked away when not being used. * All information on children, families and anyone working with me (if applicable) is kept securely and treated in confidence. Information will only be shared if the parents/carers/co-workers give their permission or there appears to be a child protection issue. All details will be kept confidential and records are kept secure. The details are easily accessible if any information is required for inspection by Ofsted. * All parents will be asked to complete permission forms for use of photos, please see Parent Permission form. Photos will be used for observations. I will be carrying my mobile phone with me when I am on outings to keep emergency contact details and to call for assistance and to contact parents if First Aid is required. My mobile does have a facility to take photo’s (this will done in accordance to parental permissions). * I am registered as a Data Controller with the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office). Biography * http://www.ncma.org.uk/childminders/your_business/policies_and_procedures/data_protection.aspx * Riddall-Leech, Sheila (2010): Home-Based Childcare Student Book: Level 3 Unit CYPOP5 * The date protection Act 1998

Reflection On Personhood - 1535 Words

As we age it becomes easier to reflect on our life and how we have occupied our time up until this point. Personhood can be defined in a variety of ways and often this definition is based on the individual’s life experiences and the people they encounter. My definition of personhood and living life to the fullest was modified following my conversation with Diane about what personhood and living life to the fullest meant to her. Diane is a passionate, 77-year-old woman that found home in an assisted living complex in Waukesha. She has stayed very busy in her time spent there and has taken advantage of many of the activities that they offer. She was very passionate about the many occupations that used to be and continue to be central to†¦show more content†¦It is important for me to add meaning to this saying because it is intertwined in my job description as a future occupational therapist. Diane described the meaning of â€Å"living life to the fullest† as something that changes as you change. For her, she was referring to her change in age and health. To live life to the fullest when you are younger means something totally different than living life to the fullest when you are older was something she emphasized. She maintained the idea that it included doing what has value and meaning in your life. She reflected on how she lived her life to the fullest when she was younger and this included owning a business, trekking to all her children’s athletic performances, taking care of her own house, doing yardwork and traveling. She explained how now she still lives her life to the fullest today but that it includes different activities and meaning than it once did. Living life to the fullest now means that she continues to stay active both mentally and physically, develops friendships, and finds new likes and dislikes. 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