We know, we know. It’s easier just to have them give you plastic bags at the check-out than it is to remember your reusable ones while you’re in the grocery store!
That’s NO excuse, however, when you hear about what those bags are doing to the world — especially when most stores are already giving you incentives to switch!
Plus, paper bags are usually just as bad. It sucks, but it’s true.
Here are some facts about plastic bags:
Plastic bags take anywhere from 15 to 1000 years to decompose.
Only 1 percent of plastic bags are recycled in the United States. The rest end up in landfills, the ocean, or some other place in the environment. There’s actually a giant garbage heap made mostly of plastic floating in the ocean that’s twice the size of the United States.
It’s estimated that 1 million birds and thousands of turtles and other sea animals die each year after ingesting discarded plastic bags.
More than 10 percent of washed-up debris polluting the U.S. coastline is made up of plastic bags.
It takes 12 million barrels of oil to produce the estimated 100 billion plastic bags Americans use each year.
The petroleum used to produce 14 plastic bags can drive a car one mile.
That’s shocking AND scary, guys.
We can’t even believe how easy it is for people to switch what they use — but they don’t!
So it’s time we get our act together and see if we can’t make a dent in the plastic bag problem… or solve it altogether, all together!
[Image via WENN.]
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