View the documentary "Bag It"

Did you know that American's use 60,000 plastic bags every five miniutees? learn more during a viewing of the documentary "Bag It" co-sponsored by the Environmental Commission and the Library.

The East Brunswick Environmental Commission and the Public Library have teamed with the NJ Environmental Lobby (NJEL)to host a screening of the new, award-winning environmental documentary Bag It at the Public Library on June 2 at 7 pm. The film will be followed by a discussion led by Daphne Speck-Bartynski, EB Environmental Commission and NJEL member, and Jeb Berrier, the star of the film, over Skype. This will be the first event in NJEL’s plan to show the film at venues across the state, to raise awareness and spread the word about initiatives to reduce plastic waste.

Although only released a few months ago, Bag it has already won awards at many film festivals including Wild and Scenic, Telluride, Monterey Blue Ocean, Eco Focus, Flagstaff Mountain, Ashland Independent and was an official selection of others, including the Wild and Scenic festival.

Bag It follows “everyman” Jeb Berrier as he tries to make sense of our dependence on plastic bags. Although his quest starts out small, Jeb soon learns that the problem extends past landfills to oceans, rivers and ultimately human health.

In the US, 12 million barrels of oil are used to create 100+ million bags per year which are used for an average of 12 minutes each, but take 400+ years to degrade. This single-use mentality has led to the formation of a floating island of plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean more than twice the size of Texas.

The film explores these issues and identifies how our daily reliance on plastic threatens not only waterways and marine life, but also human health. Two of the most common plastic additives are endocrine disruptors, which have been linked to cancer, diabetes, autism, attention deficit disorder, obesity and infertility.

The East Brunswick screening is the first event in the NJ Environmental Lobby’s campaign to show the movie at venues across the state and to join forces with the Bring Your Own Bag (BYOBag) coalition that started in Princeton after the film was shown last January at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival.

With the support of area merchants, Princeton has adopted a Bring Your Own Bag resolution recommending that community members re-use or purchase their own cloth bags and that all merchants distribute or sell cloth bags or recycled plastic bags or recycled paper bags and cease to offer new plastic bags. The kick-off for the Princeton Bring Your Own Bag campaign is on June 9.

San Francisco, Toronto and Westport, CT as well as Ireland, Italy, China and Australia, have banned and/or taxed or passed ordinances to reduce consumption of single-use plastic bags.

The NJ Environmental Lobby is an independent, non-partisan, nonprofit organization focused on the preservation and protection of a healthy environment for all our citizens. The webpage for the NJEL Bag-it Film Festival is at: http://www.njenvironment.org/bagit.html

This event is free and is open to the public.

For additional information, please email njel@earthlink.net or call 609-396-3774