Plastic Facts

Plastic bags consumed  by the U.S. this year:  (500 billion annually)

The petroleum used to make just 14 plastic bags can fuel a car for 1 mile.  That's 27 billion miles!

Cities spend up to ¢.17 (taxpayer dollars) for disposal of each bag. That's $64.6 billion!

 Over one trillion plastic grocery bags are consumed worldwide each year!

Plastic bags can last up to a thousand years in a landfill.

In the environment, they break down into tiny, toxic particles that become part of the soil and water.

There is a growing international movement to ban or discourage the use of plastic bags because of their environmental effects.

"Environment California reports that plastic bags, and other plastic refuse that end up in the ocean, kill up to one million sea creatures every year, such as birds, whales, seals, sea turtles, and others. And the number of marine mammals that die each year because of eating or being entangled in plastic is estimated at 100,000 in the North Pacific Ocean alone."  - AlterNet

"'Broken, degraded plastic pieces outweigh surface zooplankton in the central North Pacific by a factor of 6-1. That means six pounds of plastic for every single pound of zooplankton.' Which means, when birds and sea animals are looking for food -- more often, they are finding plastic."  - AlterNet