Reusable Bag Statistics
Each Year:
- 1 Trillion one-time use plastic bags are used around the world
- Nearly 2 million plastic bags are used and disposed of every minute. (Earth Policy Institute)
- Harmful plastic bags cost US retailers an average of $4 billion (National Resources Defense Council)
- American families take home approximately 1,500 disposable plastic bags (EarthInstitute)
- More than 1.7 billion tons of crude oil is burned each year to produce plastic bags alone. (Food Democracy)
- Plastics are almost completely derived from petrochemicals that are produced by the burning of fossil fuel. Around 4% of petroleum production is converted directly into plastics. (British Plastics Federation 2008)
- Manufacturing plastics also requires energy, making production also responsible for the consumption of a similar additional quantity of limited resource fossil fuels.
- The ultimate loss of using these valuable, limited resource fossil fuels to produce plastics is estimated to be anywhere from $4-$12 trillion. (EIA.gov)
- Environmental groups and activists continue to question why we are not utilizing solar, wind or renewable resources to produce plastics, as this initiative would support a sustainable future and secure a cost-effective strategy for plastic production. (Royal Society Publishing)
The Planet and Plastic Pollution:
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Of 7 types of commonly used plastic, only two are routinely recycled. These are polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and high-density polyethylene (HDPE). Only 6.5% of the 33.6 million tons of plasticbags used by Americans each year are recycled. (Columbia.edu)
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Pollution of our seas doesn’t originate in oceanic dumping. Instead, the natural elements of wind and rain carry debris to our waters and continuously accumulates in patches of toxic waste. Plastic is so durable that the EPA reports “every bit of plastic ever made still exists.” (Biological Diversity)
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Researchers have found that plastic debris acts like a sponge in absorbing toxic chemicals, which makes it an even greater environmental terror. (New Statesman)
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The time in which it takes a plastic bag to fully decompose, depending on the specific plastic type, is between 100 and 1,000 years. During this long process of decomposition, disposed plastics leak several potentially toxic pollutants into the soil of landfills and are carried naturally to our oceans. (Columbia.edu)
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Plastic is forever. It creates waste and pollution at every stage of the production process that theEarth cannot digest.
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Plastic causes health issues in humans, the environment and negatively affects every aspect of our food chain with toxic chemicals. (Everything Connects)
Ocean Life and Plastic Debris:
- When marine animals pass away as a result of plastic debris ingestion or entanglement, the toxic debris remains in the ocean and guarantees to continue threatening wildlife. (Worldwatch Institute)
- Each square mile of ocean contains at least 46,00 pieces of floating plastic. (Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme)
- The “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” is a massive concentration of plastics and other debris that has been dumped into in the North Pacific Ocean over time. Small pieces of plastic debris are suspended together just under the ocean surface, invisible to both the naked eye and satellite technology. (Book.It)
- First discovered in the late 1980’s, the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patched is estimated to be twice the size of France. (The Telegraph)
- There are 6 times the amount of plastic debris in the North Pacific Ocean as there are zooplankton,“plants of the sea” that are key components of pelagic ecosystems and form the base of most marine food webs. (Marine Bio)
- In California, U.S, nearly 25% of the fish investigated from markets contained plastic debris in their guts.Sea Turtles and Seabirds mistakenly ingest the debris, leading to ulcers, damaged stomach lining and death. Marine mammals such as monk seals, the endangered Stellar Sea Lion and sperm whales have washed up motionless on California shorelines, tangled and paralyzed by plastic debris. (Worldwatch Institute)