The plastic bags facts will change your mind to use them anymore and turning to green bags or eco-friendly bags. According to US statistical figures, 100 billion plastic bags are used in United States every year.
As a whole around the world, 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used annually. Although we believe in recycling of plastic bags, only 3 percent of such bags are actually recycled and rest end up in landfills, oceans and as liter. Every year, about 4 billion plastic bags are end up as litter. Among every 10 person, four are sure about plastic bags that they are biodegradable, but they don’t themselves do so. Plastic bags sit in landfills for 1000 years before decomposing and release of toxic chemicals. During 2002, more than 75 percent of the dead turtles were found with plastic debris in oceans. There were similar problems reported that marine life cannot digest the plastic debris and death of major marine sea turtles due to indigestion of plastic debris.
EPA ranking of chemicals that produce hazardous wastes is showing that 5 out of top six were used by plastic industry. An estimated 12 million barrel of oil is used to produce plastic bags every year in United States. These were some of the facts found about plastic bags, now let’s discuss about how renewable bags help us.
How Reusable Bags Help
Renewable bags or eco-friendly bags are energy efficient sources and also they consume more resources to produce them, as well have long time use. Using reusable eco-friendly bags will lessen our demand for plastic bags, in theory reducing the production of them and the associated pollution and oil consumption. Renewable energy resources bags can use for longer period of time and they are efficient to manage our wastes of plastic bags. At the very least, reuse does not “support” the pollution that the creation of plastic bags,
on a Personal Level:
- Reusing just one bag in your daily life (grocery/home shopping, trips to the beach/pool, gym, picnics, festivals, travel, etc.) can “eliminate” the use of approximately 6 plastic bags every week.
- Saving 6 bags a week works out to 288 bags a year
- Adopting the use of reusable bags for one’s entire life can “save” (reduce) the need for over 20,000 plastic bags
It is our current demand to start awareness campaigns about use of eco-friendly jute bags and similar reusable bags, as well as their contributions to our environment.