Plastic Bag Facts

CANADA

Every week in Canada, 55 million shopping bags are taken home from grocery stores, plus millions more from other stores.

On the average, every person in Canada puts 16-18 kilograms (35-40 pounds) of plastic in the garbage each year.

Plastic bags take between 20 and 1,000 years to break down in the environment. Plastic cannot be burned or buried safely. When it is burned it produces fluorocarbons which are carcinogens. When buried it blocks the natural supply of air and water to the soil. This affects plant life directly and the chain of life indirectly. This can even cause landslides when plant life in mountains is reduced. Plastic bags clog sewage pipes and often cause water to be stagnant. They reduce the water-retaining capacity of the soil and this in turn affects the water table. Plastic bags can be seen floating in most water bodies of the world.

Millions of mammals, birds, reptiles and fish are reported killed every year by ingesting plastic bags. Turtles in particular are prone to mistaking plastic bags for jellyfish, ingesting them and dying of intestinal blockage.

A study of albatross chicks on Midway Island, near Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean, found that nine out of 10 birds had plastic garbage in their gullets.

Scientist all over the world are trying to develop environmentally friendly plastics. Until that happens we need to think of all the ways we can reduce the number of plastic bags that go into our landfill sites. (Source: Centre for Environmental Education – News and Feature Service)

WORLD

According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. Each year an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That comes out to over one million per minute.