Plastic bag consumption & impact facts

SuperGreen

To follow up on Arctic Fox's "bring your own bag" post below, below is info from that website on plastic bag consumption and environmental impact for people "who just can't remember to bring their own bag."

Plastic Bag Consumption Facts

In the United States:

• According to the Environmental Protection Agency, over 380 billion plastic bags, sacks and wraps are consumed in the U.S. each year.
• According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. (Estimated cost to retailers is $4 billion).
• Four out of five grocery bags in the U.S. are now plastic.
• The average family accumulates 60 plastic bags in only four trips to the grocery store.

Worldwide:

• A person uses a plastic carrier bag on average for only 12 minutes.
• On average we only recycle one plastic bag in every 200 we use.
• Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That comes out to over one million per minute. Billions end up as litter each year.
• Windblown plastic bags are so prevalent in Africa that a cottage industry has sprung up harvesting bags and using them to weave hats, and even bags. According to the BBC, one group alone harvests 30,000 per month.
• According to David Barnes, a marine scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, plastic bags have gone "from being rare in the late 80s and early 90s to being almost everywhere." Plastic bags have been found floating north of the Arctic Circle near Spitzbergen, and as far south as the Falkland Islands. Source: British Antarctic Survey
• Plastic bags are among the 12 items of debris most often found in coastal cleanups, according to the nonprofit Center for Marine Conservation.

 

Plastic Bag Environmental Impact Facts

• Plastic bags don't biodegrade, they photodegrade - breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest them.
• A plastic bag can take between 400 to 1,000 years to break down in the environment.
• Plastic bags cause over 100,000 sea turtle and other marine animal deaths every year when animals mistake them for food.  SuperGreen note: Ingestion of plastic bags is the most prevalent killer of sea turtles after habitat loss.  They mistake them for jellyfish, their primary food source.
• Plastic bags are among the 12 items of debris most often found in coastal cleanups, according to the nonprofit Center for Marine Conservation.
• Nearly 90% of the debris in our oceans is plastic.

Sources: International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies or persons as cited.

Alisha_A

(Estimated cost to retailers is $4 billion).

You'd think this would really make stores want to get us all using reusable!