Disposable bags made of polyethylene can accumulate in our environment and take up to 1000 years to decompose.
Consumption of plastic bags exceed 500 billion bags each year; that is almost 1 million each minute.
Nearly 7 billion polyethylene bags are consumed annually in Australia alone; that's over 300 bags per person.
According to Australia's Department of Environment, an estimated 50,000,000 end up as liter each year.
1.
2 billion disposable bags, were used annually in Ireland, prior to the plastic bag tax of 2002.
The PlasTax was very successful decreasing plastic bag use by 90%.
100 billion plastic shopping bags are consumed in the United States annually, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Over 100,000 marine animals die each year due to plastic bags.
They confuse them as food and die suffocated.
Taiwan Banned plastic bags and plastic utensils last year.
1 in 200 single use bags are recycled in the UK, according to the BBC.
Target, Inc.
alone purchases over 1.
8 billion bags a year.
Each family accumulates, in average, over 60 disposable bags in about 4 trips to the supermarket.
According to David Barnes, a marine scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, polyethelyne bags have gone from being rare in the late 80s and early 90s to being almost everywhere from Spitsbergen 78 degrees north (latitude) to Falklands 51 degrees south (latitude).
" Single use Plastic bags are in the 12 items of debris mostly found in along the coast, according to the nonprofit center for Marine Conservation.
A good quality reusable shopping bag used can possibly eliminate over 1,000 plastic bags over its lifetime.