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A public waste bag in Paris displaying the inscription "Vigilance - Propreté" ("Vigilance - cleaness")

A typical black bin bag from the United Kingdom

A bin bag or bin liner (British English) or garbage bag, trash bag, or also can liner (American English) is a bag used to line the insides of waste containers to prevent the insides of the receptacle from becoming coated in waste material. Most bags nowadays are made out of plastic. Image File history File links Information. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1944x2592, 2098 KB) a plastic bag, replacing public trashcans, in Paris (Vigipirate anti-terror plan) The bag displays the inscription Vigilance - Propreté (Vigilance - cleaness) Copyright © 2005 David Monniaux File links The following pages link to this file: Vigipirate Waste container Metadata... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (1944x2592, 2098 KB) a plastic bag, replacing public trashcans, in Paris (Vigipirate anti-terror plan) The bag displays the inscription Vigilance - Propreté (Vigilance - cleaness) Copyright © 2005 David Monniaux File links The following pages link to this file: Vigipirate Waste container Metadata... City flag City coat of arms Motto: Fluctuat nec mergitur (Latin: Tossed by the waves, she does not sink) The Eiffel Tower in Paris, as seen from the esplanade du Trocadéro. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (1632 × 1224 pixel, file size: 818 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) One of many garbage bags at a sports event. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (1632 × 1224 pixel, file size: 818 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) One of many garbage bags at a sports event. ... British English (BrE, BE, en-GB) is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere in the Anglophone world. ... For other uses, see American English (disambiguation). ... Wash bag German military bread bag Bags are non-rigid, normally made of paper, cloth, thin plastic or some other flexible material. ... A waste container (known more commonly in British English as a dustbin and American English as a trash can) is a container, which can be made out of metal or plastic¹, used to store refuse. ... Waste inside a wheelie bin Waste in a bin bag Waste, rubbish, trash, garbage, or junk is unwanted or undesired material. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...

Plastic bags are a convenient and sanitary way of handling rubbish, and are widely used. Plastic rubbish bags are fairly lightweight and are particularly useful for messy or wet rubbish, as is commonly the case with food waste, and are also useful for wrapping up rubbish to minimize odor. Plastic bags are often used for lining litter or waste containers or bins. This serves to keep the container sanitary by avoiding container contact with the rubbish. After the bag in the container is filled with litter, the bag can be pulled out by its edges, closed, and tied with minimal contact with the waste matter. Since about the 1960s, economic plastic bags have been available for containing garbage and a variety of other uses. ...

Plastic bags for rubbish or litter are sold in a number of sizes at many other stores in packets or rolls of a few tens of bags. Wire twist ties are sometimes supplied for closing the bag once full. In the mid-1990s rubbish bags with draw strings for closure were introduced. Some bags have handles which may be tied, or holes through which the neck of the bag can be pulled. Most commonly, the rather soft, flexible plastic used to make rubbish bags is LDPE (Low Density Polyethylene) or, for strength, LLDPE (Linear Low Density Polyethylene). HDPE (High Density Polyethylene) is sometimes used. The International Tidy Man For other meanings of litter, see Litter (disambiguation). ... Polyethylene or polyethene is one of the simplest and most inexpensive polymers. ... Linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) is a substantially linear polymer, with significant numbers of short branches, commonly made by copolymerization of ethylene with longer-chain olefins. ... Polyethylene or polyethene is one of the simplest and most inexpensive polymers. ...

Created in 1950, this invention can be attributed to Canadians Harry Wasylyk, Larry Hansen and Frank Plomp. In a recent special on CBC television, the green garbage bag ranked 36th among the top 50 Canadian inventions.^[1] Harry Wasylyk was a Canadian inventor from Winnipeg, Manitoba, who together with Larry Hansen of Lindsay, Ontario, invented the disposable green polyethylene garbage bag in 1950. ... CBC Television is a Canadian English language television network. ...

Plastic bags can be incinerated with their contents in appropriate facilities for waste-to-energy conversion. They are stable and benign in sanitary landfills. Waste-to-energy (WtE) or energy-from-waste (EfW) in its strictest sense refers to any waste treatment that creates energy in the form of electricity or heat from a waste source that would have been disposed of in landfill, also called energy recovery. ... Albury landfill, Surrey, England A landfill, also known as a dump, is a site for the disposal of waste materials by burial and is the oldest form of waste treatment. ...

Biodegradable plastic bags

Some bags are made of biodegradable polythene film. These will decompose when exposed to air, sun, and moisture or submitted for composting. They do not readily decompose in a sealed landfill. They are also considered a possible contaminant to plastic recycling operations. Conventionally, plastics are made of petrochemicals. ... Plastic recycling is the process of taking scrap or waste plastics and recovering the material for use in manufacturing. ...

Oxo-biodegradable and other degradable plastic bags have certain useful applications when used as rubbish bags. Organic waste can be put into oxo-biodegradable plastic sacks and put straight into the composting plant, unopened, thus reducing smells, disease transmission by insects, and handling hazards. The resulting compost may be used by farmers and growers. Since oxo-biodegradable plastic (unlike the starch-based alternative) releases its carbon slowly, it produces high quality compost. Oxo-biodegradable plastic does not degrade quickly in low temperature "windrow" composting, but it is suitable for "in-vessel" composting at the higher temperatures required by new animal by-products regulations. Oxo-biodegradable plastics become peroxidised and embrittled, and behave like natural waste. It is bio-assimilated by the same bacteria and fungi, which transform the degraded plastic products to cell biomass, like lignocellulosic materials. Oxo-biodegradable plastic is designed to fragment by a process which includes both photo-oxidation and thermo-oxidation, so it can degrade in the dark. This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... See biomass (ecology) for the use of the term in ecology, where it refers to the cumulation of living matter Switchgrass, a tough plant used in the biofuel industry in the United States Rice chaff. ...

References

Books

• Brody, A. L., and Marsh, K, S., "Encyclopedia of Packaging Technology", John Wiley & Sons, 1997, ISBN: 0-471-06397-5
• Selke, S, "Packaging and the Environment", 1994, ISBN: 1566761042
• Selke, S,. "Plastics Packaging", 2004, ISBN: 1569903727

External links

www.capitaltradinguk.com

See also

• Packaging
• Plastic bag
• Plastic recycling