The Problem With Plastic Bags

Plastic bags start out as fossil fuels and end up as deadly waste in landfills and the ocean. Birds often mistake shredded plastic bags for food, filling their stomachs with toxic debris. For hungry sea turtles, it's nearly impossible to distinguish between jellyfish and floating plastic shopping bags. Fish eat thousands of tons of plastic a year, transferring it up the food chain to bigger fish and marine mammals. Microplastics are also consumed by people through food and in the air. It&#;s estimated that globally, people consume the equivalent of a credit card of plastic every week,1 and it&#;s expected that there will be more plastic than fish in the sea by .2

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The fossil fuel industry plans to increase plastic production by 40% over the next decade. These oil giants are rapidly building petrochemical plants across the United States to turn fracked gas into plastic. This means more plastic in our oceans, more greenhouse gas emissions and more toxic air pollution, which exacerbates the climate crisis that often disproportionately affects communities of color.

10 Facts About Single-Use Plastic Bags

1. The world uses 5 trillion plastic bags a year.3
2. Americans use an average of 365 plastic bags per person per year. People in Denmark use an average of four plastic bags per year.4
3. It only takes about 14 plastic bags for the equivalent of the gas required to drive one mile.5
4. In about 730,000 tons of plastic bags, sacks and wraps were generated (including PS, PP, HDPE, PVC & LDPE) in the United States, but more than 87% of those items are never recycled, winding up in landfills and the ocean.6
5. About 34% of dead leatherback sea turtles have ingested plastics.7
6. The plastic typically used in bottles, bags and food containers contains chemical additives such as endocrine disruptors, which are associated with negative health effects including cancers, birth defects and immune system suppression in humans and wildlife.8
7. It takes 1,000 years for a plastic bag to degrade in a landfill. Unfortunately, the bags don't break down completely but instead photo-degrade, becoming microplastics that absorb toxins and continue to pollute the environment.9
8. Chemical leachates from plastic bags impair the growth of the world&#;s most important microorganisms, Prochlorococcus, a marine bacterium that provides one tenth of the world&#;s oxygen.10
9. There were 1.9 million grocery bags and other plastic bags collected in the International Coastal Cleanup.11
10. In California became the first state to ban plastic bags. As of March , 311 local bag ordinances have been adopted in 24 states, including Hawaii.12 As of July , 127 countries have adopted some form of legislation to regulate plastic bags.13

Ways You Can Help

The company is the world’s best Recycled Plastic Products supplier. We are your one-stop shop for all needs. Our staff are highly-specialized and will help you find the product you need.

Learn more about how plastic pollution threatens wildlife.

How can recycling help our communities and our environment? How many times can cardboard be recycled? How many tons of recycled glass goes into making new bottles and jars every year? Can I recycle my plastic bottle with the cap on? Learn the answers to these questions and share these fun facts with your kids or students to teach them why recycling matters.

What you can recycle is different in every community so be sure to check your local program&#;s website for the most up-to-date information.

Did You Know:

1. The average person creates almost five pounds of trash per day, and in , American consumers created 146.2 million tons of trash that ended up in landfills. Thankfully, Americans also recycled and composted almost 94 million tons of waste &#; a rate that has grown more than 300% in the past 38 years.
2. Cardboard (also known as corrugated) boxes can be recycled at least seven times and can be used to make new packaging boxes and even furniture. The best part is, recycling cardboard is easy. Almost all Americans having access to curbside recycling for their corrugated boxes. Just make sure they&#;re empty, dry, clean, and flattened.
3. How long does it take for a used aluminum drink can to be recycled into a new one and put back on the grocery shelf? Just 60 days. It&#;s a good thing, too, because Americans love to recycle aluminum cans, which are recycled more often than any other type of drink container and can be recycled over and over again.
4. Every year, 2.4 million tons of recycled glass are used to make new bottles and jars. Recycling glass is great because it can be recycled endlessly with no loss in quality or purity. And for every six tons of recycled container glass used in manufacturing, we can reduce one ton of carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to climate change.
5. Did you know: Whether you&#;re recycling a plastic drink bottle, shampoo container, peanut butter jar, or laundry detergent bottle, you can keep the cap on when you put it in your recycle bin in most community programs? Make sure the plastic containers are empty and dry. When they are processed for recycling, the bottles and caps are ground into plastic flakes that are vigorously washed and separated in a tank where different materials float and sink.
6. The United States annually recycles enough iron and steel scrap metals (known as ferrous scrap), by weight, to build more than 900 Golden Gate Bridges &#; a bridge stretching nearly 9,000 feet.
7. More than 52 million tons of paper products were recycled in . That&#;s roughly the same weight as almost 350,000 blue whales.
8. Recycling helps save energy. If you recycle one glass bottle, it saves enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for four hours, power a computer for 30 minutes, or a television for 20 minutes.
9. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a 55-inch HDTV to watch your favorite movie. If we recycled all of the aluminum cans in the U.S., the energy saved could power 4.1 million homes for a full year.
10. What happens to recycled plastic containers? They can be used to make new plastic containers, but it doesn&#;t stop there. Recycled plastic can also be used in creating other things like cell cases, playground equipment, clothes, and rugs.
11. Did you know recycling has always been a part of the process of making paper? Paper, as we know it today, is believed to have originated from China thousands of years ago, made out of mulberry bark, hemp, and rags mixed with water, mashed into pulp, pressed, and hung to dry in the sun. Today, paper is made from trees mostly grown on working forests and from recovered paper. When you recycle your used paper, paper mills use it to make new newspapers, notebook paper, paper grocery bags, corrugated boxes, envelopes, magazines, cartons, and other paper products.
12. Recycling saves raw materials. For example, over a ton of natural resources are conserved for every ton of glass recycled, including 1,300 pounds of sand, 410 pounds of soda ash, 380 pounds of limestone, and 160 pounds of feldspar.
13. The Gateway Arch in St. Louis used 900 tons of stainless steel in construction &#; more stainless steel than any project in history at the time it was built. In the U.S., enough stainless steel is recycled each year to build nearly 1,500 Gateway Arches.
14. Recycling can make one person&#;s trash another person&#;s treasure! One metric ton of electronic scrap from personal computers contains more gold than that recovered from 17 tons of gold ore.
15. Recycling helps our planet and our economy. The Recycling Partnership&#;s State of Residential Recycling Report from January shows that only 21% of U.S. residential recyclables that could be recycled are being recycled. When we capture the remaining 79% we will avoid more than 107 million metric tons of CO2 &#; equal to eliminating the emissions from 22.8 million passenger vehicles.
16. Does your favorite morning drink come in a carton? Well, that carton is a valuable recyclable material! The paper pulp and press board that comes from recycled cartons can be used to make toilet paper, paper towels, or even eco-friendly building materials like roof cover boards.

The Recycling Partnership believes we all have a part to play in making our recycling system successful. With more knowledge, we can do our best to make a difference and recycle to the fullest of our abilities. That&#;s why we developed this list of fun recycling facts for kids. Share these fun recycling facts with your friends and kids teachers and go over them with your kids. We have more great resources for students in grades K-5 in the link below.

Thanks to the Aluminum Association, American Forest and Paper Association, Association of Plastic Recyclers, Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for providing many of these fun facts.

Download more K-5 resources here

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