In 1977 the people of the United States found they could use plastic as a disposable source for shopping bags, plates and utensils according to Abbe Gloor, a representative of Bag Busters.

Since then, Gloor said the amount of plastic that pollutes our oceans and land has sky rocketed; 300 million tons of plastic is thrown away in the Untied States annually. Most of this ends up in our oceans.

Gloor has been promoting the awareness of plastic bag pollution for years.

“Plastic in the ocean is more like smog in a city,” Gloor said. “We have to stop that smog at the source.”

She does events where she will dress herself in plastic bags and stand in a public area to show everyone what polluting with bags looks like.

While promoting this, she gets questions like, “If I don’t use a plastic bag, then what do I use?”

Gloor refers to this as “throw away living.” It is something our society has come accustom to, and a way of life a lot of us have grown up with, not knowing any other way.

According to Gloor, we could be polluting without even realizing it. For instance, a fleece jackets can release 250,000 microfibers of plastic. These microfibers are so small, there is no way we can clean it.

We as a society have gotten into the habit of using plastic and then throwing it away, not thinking about what the consequence are, according to Gloor. This is something that needs to be changed. We need to get used to using reusable sources and not something that just gets thrown away.

The end goal for Bag Busters is to make King County a bag-free area.