- Somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year.
- It costs more to recycle plastic bags than to make them, only 1% of plastic bags are recycled.
- Oceangoing vessels dumped 8 million pounds of plastic a year.
- Landfills weren't overflowing because it ended up in an ocean-fill.
- They have been found floating north of Arctic Circle and as far south as Falkland Islands.
- Plastic bags account for over 10% of debris washed up on the U.S Coastline.
- They photodegrade: They break down into smaller, more toxic petro-polymers that eventually contaminate soils and waterways. They can enter the food chain through microscopic particles.
- Birds can be terminally entangled.
- 200 different species of sea life such as whales, dolphins, seals and turtles die from plastic bags which they mistake for food.
- What do we do?
- If we use a cloth bag, we can save 6 bags a week, 24 a month, 288 a year, 22,176 in an average lifetime.
- If 1/5 people in our country did this, we would save 1,330,560,000,000 bags over our lifetime.
- Bangladesh and China has banned plastic bags.
- Ireland taxes plastic bags since 2002 and reduced consumption by 90%.
- Rwanda also banned plastic bags (2005).
- Israel, Canada, Bostwana, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Taiwan have also banned or is moving toward banning plastic bags.
- San Francisco is the first U.S city to ban plastic bags-March 27,2007.
- Oakland and Boston are considering bans.
- Bags are made from polyethylene, made from oil.
- Reduction of plastic bags decreases the foreign oil dependency.