There’s a big change coming to San Antonio SeaWorld Park. We’re not talking about the arrival of a baby whale or some new dolphin tricks but instead the banning of plastic bags. By this time next year visitors at the San Antonio SeaWorld Park souvenir shops will be offered a choice of either a 100% recycled paper bag or purchasing a reusable cloth bag to hold all their trinkets and souvenirs.

According to Angie Llanas, an animal ambassador at SeaWorld San Antonio, this is a major problem “At this park alone, we go through 800,000 plastic bags a year,” she said. “Taking that out of the mix can really have an effect on the environment.”  Not only is this an issue for San Antonio residents but also for all the denizens living under the sea. Recent estimates put the amount of plastic bags that end up in the ocean at around 1.4 billion pounds. That is billion with a B!

It’s not just the ocean that has to deal with all of this garbage but also many of the waterways like the ones that are home to animals like Spike, the alligator snapping turtle found in Texas and the southeastern U.S. What happens when a plastic bag makes its way into the water is that a creature like a sea turtle thinks it’s a jellyfish and gobbles it up. That can cause major problems for that beastie.

“We don’t want that, so anything we can do to help, that’s great,” Mark Miller, a park visitor from the Woodlands near Houston, told the local news. A program like this one is a perfect way to inspire the next generation of recyclers; that would be your kids.

The lesson here is that if they’re all are always alternatives when it comes to sending trash to a landfill or throwing it onto the street. You might already have your kids involved in a recycling program around the house. Once you teach them how to sort kitchen garbage it’s easy to fall into the routine of weekly recycling. The one drawback with this type of program is that you are only able to recycle whatever you could fit into your recycling bin. This is going to leave a lot of items earmarked for a landfill unless you team up with Junk King San Antonio.

Junk King is the San Antonio based business that specializes in junk removal of any size. The Junk King crews have been instructed that when they come across an item which can be recycled they need to make sure it ends up at the proper facility. This includes stuff like your unwanted furniture, mattress or scrap metal pieces. With Junk King San Antonio on your team you can rest assured that every effort will be taken to keep your garbage away from a landfill. That’s good for the kids and all creatures great and small!