Home > Info: Plastic Bag Facts
| | |
|
|
- The ubiquitous plastic shopping bag didn't come into widespread use until the early 1980s. Single-use paper and plastic bags are typically used for less than 10 minutes, yet they litter the earth and bring detrimental effects to our landscapes and waterways for hundreds of years afterwards.
- They clog sewer pipes, crowd our landfills and harm sea animals and their habitats, and yet millions are snapped up in seconds at stores worldwide without a thought.
- Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrade. It takes plastic bags 450+ years to break down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest them.
- Nearly 1 million plastic bags are used every minute, worldwide, and the number is rising.
- Environmental groups estimate that 500 billion to 1 trillion single-use paper and plastic bags are now used worldwide every year.
- There are over 100,000 global marine deaths including seabirds, marine mammals and fish per year due to plastic bag ingestion.
- In the U.S. around 270 million plastic shopping bags get used in a single day.
- According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually, and making them requires an estimated 12 million barrels of oil!
- The EPA estimates that only 1% of the plastic bags used in the U.S. are actually recycled.
- Plastic industry trade associations were unable to provide estimates of plastic bag use in the United States. However, based on studies of plastic bag use in other nations, the environmental group Californians Against Waste estimates Americans use 84 billion plastic bags annually.
- Paper bags pose its own set of problems, because they use more energy to produce than plastic which leads to 70% more pollution than plastic bags. As the bags break down they emit methane, a greenhouse gas twenty times more potent than carbon.
- In 1999 more than 14 million trees were cut down to produce 10 billion paper bags that were used by Americans that year!
Reusable Bags are an immediate solution. Choosing reusable shopping bags is one of the easiest ways to cut down on your waste and take a simple step in the path towards living sustainably.
Choose to refuse single-use bags! It's never too late to get started!
- Reusable bags save trees
- Reusable bags save water
- Reusable bags save gas and oil
- Reusable bags help reduce air pollution
- Reusable bags protect our sea animals from dangerous plastic bag waste
- Reusable bags help our oceans stay cleaner
- Reusable bags help protect our children's future
- Reusable bags save 700+ bags over the span of their lifetime!
Thankfully, there are now a lot of reusable bags on the market today, but not all are created equal! A reusable bag is only having a positive impact on the environment if you are actually reusing it.
|
|
| |
| | |
|
|
|