Honu and other marine life mistake plastic bag for food.
Hundreds of plastic bags stuck in the trees on Pulehu Road on Maui.
When 1 ton of paper bags is reused or recycled, 3 cubic meters of landfill space is saved and 13 - 17 trees are spared! In 1997, 955,000 tons of paper bags were used in the United States.
Less than 5 % of US shoppers use canvas, cotton or mesh bags. Please change the number by choosing reusable when you shop.
Using eco-friendly reusable shopping bags instead of plastic bags is a small, and simple lifestyle change. You wouldn’t forget your purse or wallet before going to the grocery store, so just remember not to forget your re-usable shopping
bags.
Each reusable shopping bag you use has the
potential to eliminate hundreds, if not thousand, of plastic bags over its lifetime.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. An estimated 12 million barrels of oil is required to make that many plastic bags
Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photodegrad breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food web when animals accidentally ingest.
The average family bring home about 1,000 plastic
bags every year. Most of these bags end up in the land fill, which it can take up to 1,000 year for a bag to decompose.
Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and
other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food.
Some bags only claim to be green but are made from non-woven polypropylene ("NWP"). This textile is byproduct of oil refining and it is not biodegradable. You may reuse the NWP several times, but all bags must someday be thrown out. The NWP will not biodegrade and never will be compostable back into the landfill.