Data released by the United States Environmental Protection Agency shows that somewhere between 500
billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year.Less than 1% of bags are recycled.
It cost more to recycle a bag than to produce a new one.
- Christian Science Monitor News Paper
“There's harsh economics behind bag recycling: It costs $4,000 to process and recycle 1 ton of plastic
bags, which can then be sold on the commodities market for $32”
- Jared Blumenfeld
(Director of San Francisco's Department of the Environment)
Then… Where Do They Go? | So… What do we do? | ||
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A study in 1975, showed oceangoing vessels together dumped 8 million pounds of plastic annually. The real reason that the world's landfills weren't overflowing with plastic was because most of it ended up in an ocean-fill. | Bags get blown around… | If we use a cloth bag, we can save 6 bags a week we ca | That's 24 bags a month |
…to different parts of our lands | …and to our seas, lakes and rivers. | That's 288 bags a year | That's 22,176 bags in an average life time in |
Bags find their way into the sea via drains and sewage pipes | Plastic bags have been found floating north of the Arctic Circle near Spitzbergen, and as far south | If just 1 out of 5 people in our country did we would save 1,330,560,000,000 bags over our life time | Bangladesh has banned plastic bags |
Plastic bags account for over 10 percent of the debris washed up on the U.S. coastline | Plastic bags photodegrade: Over time they break down into smaller, more toxic petro-polymers | China has banned free plastic bags China hasbanned free plastic bags | Ireland took the lead in Europe, taxing plastic bags in 2002 and have now reduced plastic bag |
Nearly 200 different species of sea life including whales, dolphins, seals and turtles die due to plastic bags | | On March 27th 2007, San Francisco becomes first U.S. city to ban plastic bags - NPR.org (National Public Radio) | It is possible... |