More Plactic Bag Stats....

• Four to five trillion plastic bags are manufactured each year
• As many as one trillion [1,000,000,000,000] plastic bags are used annually worldwide and only 1% of these are recycled
• Plastic bags are made from polyethylene, which is a thermoplastic made from crude oil. In China, people use billions of plastic bags and their ban on free plastic bags will save them over 37 million barrels of oil annually!
• It takes 1,000 years for polyethylene bags to break down
• As polyethylene breaks down, toxic substances leach into the soil and enter the food chain
• Plastic bags account for 10% of all coastline debris in the U.S.
• Eight million pounds of plastic end up in our oceans killing our wildlife to the tune of approximately one billion seabirds and mammals. These animals suffer a painful death.
• Plastic bags choke landfills
• If one out of five people in North America convert from plastic bags to reusable cloth totes, it will save our environment from the damage of 1.3 trillion [1,300,000,000,000] plastic bags in our lifetime