· On average we use each plastic bag for only 12 minutes before disposing of it, contributing to global warming, depleting oil supplies, and driving up costs of home heating oil and gasoline. (United Nations Environmental Programme)
· 4 billion plastic bags end up as litter each year. Tied end to end that’s enough to circle the earth 63 times.
· It takes up to 1000 years or longer for a plastic bag to degrade into smaller bits of plastic which can pose toxic threats to marine life and contaminate the food web.
· Cities like San Francisco waste millions of tax dollars disposing plastic bags and have begin charging up to 17 cents per bag in disposal costs.
· Paper bags take up more space in landfills, and do not degrade or break down at a substantially faster rate than plastic
· Recycling rates of either type of disposable bag are extremely low, with only 10 to 15% of paper bags and 1 to 3% of plastic bags being recycled, according to the Wall Street Journal. In fact, it actually costs recycling companies around $4,000 to process and recycle 130,000 plastic
bags.
· Recycling single-use plastic bags is just not economical. The quality of plastic used in these bags is poor and the inks used make it a difficult and tedious process.
· Many bags collected never get recycled and are shipped to Third world countries where they are cheaply incinerated under more lax environmental laws.
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