"Biodegradable Plastic Bags, Not So Biodegradable"
by Vicky Stein
The average person uses a typical plastic bag for as short a time as 12 minutes before throwing it away, never thinking of where it may end up.
Yet once consigned to a landfill, that standard grocery store tote takes hundreds or thousands of years to break down — much more than a human lifetime. Bags make up an alarming amount of the plastic found in whale stomachs or bird nests, and it’s no wonder — globally, we use between 1 and 5 trillion plastic bags each year.
Biodegradable plastic bags are marketed as more eco-friendly solutions, able to break down into harmless material more quickly than traditional plastics. One company claims their shopping bag “will degrade and biodegrade in a continuous, irreversible and unstoppable process” if it ends up as litter in the environment.
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Question
Use the article to answer the question.
Why did the author include the “What the researchers did” section?
(1 point)
Responses
to show how new technology can help scientists develop new, improved biodegradable plastics
to show how new technology can help scientists develop new, improved biodegradable plastics
to show that biodegradable bags do not break down more easily than standard plastic bags
to show that biodegradable bags do not break down more easily than standard plastic bags
to show how researchers studied the decomposition of standard plastic bags compared to biodegradable ones
to show how researchers studied the decomposition of standard plastic bags compared to biodegradable ones
Biodegradable plastics are difficult to recycle and slow to biodegrade, which suggests that they may cause more problems than they solve.