Why Use Re-usable Bags? 

Plastic bags don't biodegrade; they’re expensive and hard to remove.

4.7 million tons of plastic trash reaches the sea each annually

When the small particles from photo-degraded plastic bags get into the water, they are ingested by filter feeding marine animals. Biotoxins like PCBs that are in the particles are then passed up the food chain, including up to humans.[7]

“Plastic trash breaks into billions of fragments that hover below the surface in vast, soupy patches in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.” (Wassener)

The “Eastern Garbage Patch” in the Pacific is made up of at least 80% plastic! And it's about the size of Texas.

Less than 1% of plastic bags are recycled each year. Recycling 1 ton of plastic bags costs $4K; the recycled product is only worth $32. (Plastic Bags: and the Legislation to Curb their Usage, Alexandra Wells, July, 2011)

During 2009’s International Coastal Cleanup, the Ocean Conservancy found that plastic bags were the second-most common kind of waste found, at 1 out of ten items picked up and tallied.[3]

Americans annually produce 300,000 tons of landfill waste solely from plastic bags.

In China alone, “37 million barrels of crude oil” are used each year to create the 3 billion plastic bags that the Chinese use every day (O’Loughlin).

The state of California spends about 25 million dollars sending plastic bags to landfill each year, and another 8.5 million dollars to remove littered bags from streets.[6]

Plastic bags do not biodegrade. Light breaks them down into smaller and smaller particles that contaminate the soil and water and are expensive and difficult to remove.6

Less than 1 percent of plastic bags are recycled each year. Recycling one ton of plastic bags costs $4,000. The recycled product can be sold for $32.6

The City of San Francisco determined that it costs 17 cents for them to handle each discarded bag.

After Ireland introduced the PlasTax in 2002, a 15-cent charge per plastic bag in 2002, bag consumption dropped by 90 percent. In 2008, the average person in Ireland used 27 plastic bags, while the average person in Britain used 220. The program raised 9.6 millions of euros in revenue that benefited the environment.[5]

 

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Cited from Plastic Bags: and the Legislation to Curb their Usage, Alexandra Wells, NYU Steinhardt
 

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Call to Action:

1. Support legislation that will ban plastic bags in your town, in your state.
Here is one Petitioning Boston City Council to Ban Plastic Bags Boston Petition.

2. In the absence of legislation banning plastic bags, support a Bill levying fee on plastic bags, like Ireland to reduce their use.

3. Pressure plastic manufacturers to make plastics with biodegradable products, like lactic acid, etc.

4. Promote the use of re-usable bags

5. Share videos with your friends and family of Ocean Pollution. Here are a few samples:

Marine litter - the ocean pollution
Stop Ocean Pollution
Ocean Pollution Introduction

6. Support research to manufacture plastics with biodegrable products.

7. Promote the collection and recycling of plastic bags in your community. Though recycling plastics encompasses some cost, it's much better than keeping them from the oceans.