plastic facts:
Using disposable bags seems harmless on a small scale, but when looked at collectively, the damage to our land and waterways is significant. Not only do single-use bags pollute pristine areas, but they require substantial resources (oil, water, energy) to produce in the volumes that we demand. Our goal is to help you reduce waste on a daily basis by cutting down on disposable items and adding reusable products to your list. Not only will it limit the amount of waste going into the landfills, but it can save you money, too.
Did you know?
Every day 20 million plastic baggies go into landfills.
- More than 380 billion plastic bags, of all types, are used
in the US every year. (EPA)
- Only 1-3% of plastic bags in the USA end up being recycled.
- Each high quality reusable bag you use has the potential to eliminate an average of 1,000 plastic bags over its lifetime. The bag will pay for itself over time.
- Each child who brings a “brown-bag” lunch to school every day will generate 67 pounds of waste by the end of the school year - that's 18,760 pounds of lunch waste for an average-sized school. (EPA)
- Plastic materials do not biodegrade - they photodegrade in a process where sunlight breaks down plastic into increasingly smaller pieces.
- Plastic never completely goes away. Ocean animals mistake plastic bags and tiny plastic particles for food (zooplankton), bringing toxic substances into the food chain.
- There are an estimated 50,000 pieces of plastic per square mile in the world’s oceans.
- Ninety percent of the trash in the world’s oceans is plastic. Most of that plastic comes from plastic bags, plastic water bottles and styrofoam.
- There is a massive patch of floating plastic trash held together by swirling currents off the California coast in the North Pacific. It is anywhere between 250,000 square miles to 6 million square miles in size.
- Because ocean water keeps the plastic particles cool and algae blocks ultraviolet rays, "every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere."
(Research Triangle Institute)
|
|
