The facts about plastic bags are ugly!

• Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide. That comes out to over one million per minute.

• According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. (Estimated cost to retailers is $4 billion.)

• Some estimate a plastic bag may take one thousand years to decompose. That means a bag thrown away during the crusades, the birth of Constantine, or at the signing of the Magna Carta would just be finishing its decomposition now.

• 86% of all known species of sea turtles have had reported problems of entanglement or ingestion of marine debris.

• The cost to recycle plastic bags so outweighs their value that most recycling facilities will not take them, leading more and more to just be thrown out with the rest of the trash.

• According to the Wall Street Journal, only 1% of plastic bags are recycled world-wide; the rest are left to live on indefinitely in landfills.

• Made from petroleum products and natural gas, plastic bags utilize nonrenewable resources, ultimately helping to drive up fuel prices.

• It takes 12 million barrels of oil to produce the amount of plastic bags the US uses per year.

• Less than 5 percent of US shoppers use canvas, cotton or mesh bags. Please change that number by choosing reusable when you shop.

Make a statement with our reusable shopping bags.



Reasons to make a switch:

• Some grocery stores even offer discounts for customers who bring their own bags - now that's incentive!

• In New York City, one less grocery bag per person would reduce waste by 5 million pounds and save $250,000 in disposal costs.

• The average reusable bag has the lifespan of over seven hundred disposable plastic bags.

• Over a lifetime, use of reusable bags by just one person would save over 22,000 plastic bags. Isn't that even better incentive?


Read More:

Are Plastic Grocery Bags Sacking the Environment? - National Geographic

Top UN Environmental Official: Ban Plastic Bags - Environmental Leader

50 reasons to stop using plastic shopping bags - Smart Spending Money Blog