Getting ready for Earth Day!

I've spent the last few days stocking up on my "green" items for around the house and for gifts. The week before Earth Day always has some great deals online for reusable, sustainable and natural products. And...free shipping helps too!

Reuseit.com is one of my favorite sites. They had something that I thought I'd share(maybe again). Scary, but true facts.

Fast Facts on Plastic Bags

• 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used every year, worldwide.


• About 1 million plastic bags are used every minute.


• A single plastic bag can take up to 1,000 years to degrade.


• More than 3.5 million tons of plastic bags, sacks and wraps were discarded in 2008.


• The U.S. goes through 100 billion single-use plastic bags. This costs retailers about $4 billion a year.


• Plastic bags are the second-most common type of ocean refuse, after cigarette butts.


• Plastic bags remain toxic even after they break down.


• Every square mile of ocean has about 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in it.

The Problem

• It is estimated that worldwide plastic bag consumption falls between 500 billion and 1 trillion bags annually. That breaks down to almost 1 million every minute.


• The average family accumulates 60 plastic bags in only four trips to the grocery store.


• In good circumstances, high-density polyethylene will take more than 20 years to degrade. In less ideal circumstances (land fills or as general refuse), a bag will take more than 1,000 years to degrade.


• An estimated 3,960,000 tons of plastic bags, sack and wraps were produced in 2008. Of those, 3,570,000 tons (90%) were discarded. This is almost triple the amount discarded the first year plastic bag numbers were tracked (1,230,000 tons in 1980). (EPA)


• Ten percent of the plastic produced every year worldwide winds up in the ocean. 70% of which finds its way to the ocean floor, where it will likely never degrade. (UN, 2006)
  

The Impact

• The U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually at an estimated cost to retailers of $4 billion. (The Wall Street Journal)


• The extremely slow decomposition rate of plastic bags leaves them to drift on the ocean for untold years. According to Algalita Marine Research Foundation, these plastic bags cause the death of many marine animals (fish, sea turtles, etc.), every year when animals mistake them for food.


• Numbers were kept on 43 different types of refuse. Cigarette butts were the most common. Plastic bags came in second. (Ocean Conservency, 2008)


• When plastics break down, they don't biodegrade; they photodegrade. This means the materials break down to smaller fragments which readily soak up toxins. They then contaminate soil, waterways, and animals upon digestion.
  

The Solution

• The solution is not a plastic bag ban, which is an emotional response which fails to strike at the heart of the issue; instead of a market-based solution, a ban shifts production to paper bags and compostable bags, both of which have heavy environmental consequences.


• The solution is not switching to paper bags or compostable plastic bags. A study on the life cycle of three types of disposable bags (single-use plastic, paper, and compostable plastic) showed that both compostable plastic and paper bags require more material per bag in the manufacturing process. This means "higher consumption of raw materials in the manufacture of the bags...[and] greater energy in bag manufacturing and greater fuel use in the transport of the finished product. ...The added requirements of manufacturing energy and transport for the compostable and paper bag systems far exceed the raw material use in the standard plastic bag system." (from a peer reviewed Boustead Consulting & Associates report)