Facts About Plastic Bags

1. Many countries throughout Europe have imposed an “eco-tax” on regular plastic bags. Biodegradable plastic bags are exempt from such taxes.

2. Regular plastic bags take up to 1,000 years to degrade, and even then don’t ever really dissappear.

3. It has been estimated that it costs governments and business over $4 Million per year to clean up littering plastic shopping bags.

4. An estimated 300 billion plastic bags, or 1.8 million tons of plastic bags are disposed of in landfill sites throughout the US alone, each year.

5. Plastics are made from non-renewable natural resources such as oil, gas, and coal. The manufacturing processes of making plastic bags pollute the environment with harmful greenhouse gases.

6. There are approximately 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in each square mile of our oceans.

7. Just 14 grocery bags contain enough embodied petroleum energy to drive a car 1 mile.

8. Each year, Americans use 117 billion new plastic bags. If these were all tied together, they would stretch around the world 725 times!

9. Americans dump 68,000 plastic bags into landfill every minute. That’s 4,080,000 bags every hour!

10. It is estimated that plastic kills 1 million sea birds, 100,000 sea mammals and countless fish each year.

11. Turtles, dolphins and killer whales can choke or starve by confusing plastic bags for jellyfish. See the devastating effects plastic bags have on the environment.

Here’s how long it takes for some commonly used products to biodegrade, after they are disposed of:

Cotton rags————————————1-5 months
Paper——————————————–2-5 months
Rope———————————————3-14 months
Orange peels———————————-6 months
Wool socks————————————-1-5 years
Cigarette butts——————————–1-12 years
Plastic coated paper milk cartons———-5 years
Leather shoes———————————25-40 years
Nylon fabric————————————30-40 years
Tin cans—————————————–50-100 years
Aluminium cans——————————–80-100 years
Plastic 6-pack holder rings——————450 years
Glass bottles———————————–1 million years
Plastic bottles———————————-Forever

The real impact of plastic bag litter affects wildlife both in the marine environment and in rural areas. Tens of thousands of whales, birds, seals and turtles are killed every year from plastic bag litter in the marine environment as they often mistake plastic bags for food such as jellyfish. Plastic bags, once ingested, cannot be digested or passed by an animal so it stays in their stomachs. Plastic in an animal’s digestive tract can prevent food digestion and can lead to a very slow and painful death. In the case of biodegradable plastic bags, the bags would disolve in water after a short time, while those bags that would be swallowed by marine animals, the animals’ digestive fluids would dissolve the biodegradable plant additive, therefore breaking the bag up into little pieces, which the animal could later pass naturally. As plastic bags can take up to 1000 years to break down, once an animal dies and decays after ingesting plastic, the plastic is then freed back into the marine environment to carry on killing other wildlife! Turtles have also been rescued with plastic bags lodged in their throat – and part of the bag hanging out of their mouth. The turtle pictured above was found and rescued by a senior staff member of Melbourne (Australia) Zoo while they were out doing fieldwork.