Plastic Bag

Plastic Bags. 

Followed by the massive consumption of plastic bottles. A plastic bag has become a major problem to the environment, affecting significantly on marine life. 

　　　Currently over 40% of the plastic that is produced globally, is used for packaging and plastic bags. And nearly half of such plastic that has been made so far, was produced after the year 2000. Signifying how a large amount of plastic bags has been produced, in a very short time span (2015). Adding on, a similar condition as the plastic bottle is occurring, to plastic, in general, that is on the number of plastic recycled globally. Here, the amount of plastic that actually gets recycled is less than a fifth of all the plastic. 

So how does this affect marine life? 

　　　Well, guess what. 8 million tons of plastics are dumped in the ocean every year. 

And because of that, 8 million tons of plastic waste flows into oceans every year from the coastal regions. This is equivalent to laying five grocery bags in each 35 cm of coastline all around the world. This leads to, 1 in 3 species of marine mammal being found getting entangled in such plastic litter that was dumped in the ocean. And figure tells, that over 90% of the seabirds have plastic pieces within their stomach. 

And still, annually 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide. Which equals to more than one million plastic bags used every minute. While the actual use of plastic bags lasts for 15 minutes or less. 

How do we change this? 

There is nothing simpler than to say ‘no’ for plastic bags at any store. 

Carry an eco-bag around. 

Figures show that changes can be possible if everyone commits to the action. Here for, in an average data of shopper annual use of plastic bags in America, figures are up high pointing 365 bags per year. However, in some other countries such as Denmark, a country which is giving progress to this account, has an average of shoppers using only four plastic bags a year. 

 So what do we say? No thanks for the plastic bag.