Facts About the Plastic Bag Pandemic
Fast Facts on Plastic Bags
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Over 1 trillion plastic bags are used every year worldwide. Consider
China, a country of 1.3 billion, which consumes 3 billion plastic bags
daily, according to China Trade News.
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About 1 million plastic bags are used every minute.
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A single plastic bag can take up to 1,000 years to degrade.
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More than 3.5 million tons of plastic bags, sacks and wraps were discarded in 2008.
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Only 1 in 200 plastic bags in the UK are recycled (BBC).
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The U.S. goes through 100 billion single-use plastic bags. This costs retailers about $4 billion a year.
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Plastic bags are the second-most common type of ocean refuse, after cigarette butts (2008)
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Plastic bags remain toxic even after they break down.
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Every square mile of ocean has about 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in it.
The Problem
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An estimated 6 billion plastic bags are consumed--just in that county--each year. (William T. Fujioka, 2008)
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It is estimated that worldwide plastic bag consumption falls between
500 billion and 1 trillion bags annually. That breaks down to almost 1
million every minute.
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The average family accumulates 60 plastic bags in only four trips to the grocery store.
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In good circumstances, high-density polyethylene will take more than
20 years to degrade. In less ideal circumstances (land fills or as
general refuse), a bag will take more than 1,000 years to degrade.
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An estimated 3,960,000 tons of plastic bags, sack and wraps were
produced in 2008. Of those, 3,570,000 tons (90%) were discarded. This is
almost triple the amount discarded the first year plastic bag numbers
were tracked (1,230,000 tons in 1980). (EPA)
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Anywhere from .5% to 3% of all bags winds up recycled. (BBC, CNN)
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Every square mile of the ocean has about 46,000 pieces of floating plastic in it. (UN, 2006)
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Ten percent of the plastic produced every year worldwide winds up in
the ocean. 70% of which finds its way to the ocean floor, where it will
likely never degrade. (UN, 2006)
The Impact
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The U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually at an estimated cost to retailers of $4 billion. (The Wall Street Journal)
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The extremely slow decomposition rate of plastic bags leaves them to
drift on the ocean for untold years. According to Algalita Marine
Research Foundation, these plastic bags cause the death of many marine
animals (fish, sea turtles, etc.), every year when animals mistake them
for food.
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Numbers were kept on 43 different types of refuse. Cigarette butts
were the most common. Plastic bags came in second. (Ocean Conservency,
2008)
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When plastics break down, they don't biodegrade; they photodegrade.
This means the materials break down to smaller fragments which readily
soak up toxins. They then contaminate soil, waterways, and animals upon
digestion.
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Windblown plastic bags are so prevalent in Africa that a cottage
industry has sprung up to harvest them. These are then woven and sold as
hats and (more durable) bags.
The Solution
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The solution is not a plastic bag ban, which is an emotional
response which fails to strike at the heart of the issue; instead of a
market-based solution, a ban shifts production to paper bags and
compostable bags, both of which have heavy environmental consequences.
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The solution is not switching to paper bags or compostable
plastic bags. A study on the life cycle of three types of disposable
bags (single-use plastic, paper, and compostable plastic) showed that
both compostable plastic and paper bags require more material per bag in
the manufacturing process. This means "higher consumption of raw
materials in the manufacture of the bags...[and] greater energy in bag
manufacturing and greater fuel use in the transport of the finished
product. ...The added requirements of manufacturing energy and transport
for the compostable and paper bag systems far exceed the raw material
use in the standard plastic bag system." (from a peer reviewed Boustead
Consulting & Associates report)
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reuseit.com™ supports a multi-pronged approach that discourages the
distribution of plastic bags with a tax and a cultural shift away from
use-and-toss plastic bags:
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Plastic Tax: In 2001, Ireland implemented a plastic
tax (or PlasTax); the first of its kind, this route acknowledges the
fact that people will still occasionally use plastic bags. This
market-based solution discourages daily, thoughtless use of plastic
bags by charging a nominal fee per bag at checkout. In a study by the
Irish Department of the Environment it was found that plastic bag usage
had dropped 93.5%. This breaks down to a drop from 328 to 21 bags per
person each year.
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A cultural shift away from use-and-toss culture: Each reusable bag can eliminate hundreds (if not thousands) of plastic bags.
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