Plastic Bags - Facts & Figures
There are oodles of icky plastic bag statistics out there. This month at Tree Hugging Family, our focus is reusable bags and our June challenge is to reduce plastic bag consumption. There are plenty of good reasons to do so.
Reusable Bags offers these (and other) facts related to plastic bags:
- 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used per year - or one million per minute. Insanity; um yeah. Most don’t make it to a recycling facility.
- “According to Australia’s Department of Environment, Australians consume 326 plastic bags per person, per year.”
- “Plastic bags are among the 12 items of debris most often found in coastal cleanups, according to the nonprofit Center for Marine Conservation.”
- In 2001, Ireland consumed around 316 plastic bags per person. After the PlasTax, a tax on plastic bags was introduced in Ireland, plastic bag consumption was actually reduced by 90%. That amount has saved around 18,000,000 liters of oil.
Options:
Paper bags over plastic: Paper bags have been noted to create more actual air and water pollution than plastic, yet this article from the New York Times relates that people are more likely to recycle paper than plastic; but not by a hugely significant amount. End result, neither paper nor plastic is a stellar eco-choice.
Keep using plastic: Well, the plastic industry (pdf facts) would like you to think that using plastic bags is a super duper choice, noting that plastic bags are recyclable, which is true, yet they themselves note that not every community has plastic bag recycling access, and they also can’t give facts on anyone who recycles more than 20% of their plastic bag. 20% is a flimsy low number.
Keep using plastic bags, but recycle them: Why The Bag Backlash? is an excellent article on why recycling plastic bags is an iffy eco-action at best. Truly, the best action is to stop plastic bag consumption, not fancy it up with recycling measures that don’t actually work.
Cloth reusable bags: Thus far, cloth reusable bags are by far the best eco option when it comes to choice of bags. You can use them again and again, cutting them into cleaning rags, when they finally die, and then they’ll biodegrade. There are plastic reuse options available, however, studies show that bags made from recycled plastics are rarely re-recycled, thus not really closing the plastic loop.
Look for more facts on plastic bags this month.
Tags: bags, Bring Your Own Bag Challenge, cloth bags, collect plastic bags, plastic bags, recycled plastic bags, reusable bags, Reuse, Shop Green, Take Your Own Bag
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