About Plastic Bags
100 billion plastic bags are used by Americans per year, more than 300 bags per person per year.
Plastics bags are used for an average of 12 minutes, but a single plastic bag has a life expectancy of up to 1,000 years.
Retail businesses spend more than $4 billion per year to provide plastic bags.
Fewer than one in seven plastic bags are re-cycled.
The effects of plastics on human health because of widespread ingestion through food and water sources and not fully understood, but research shows connections with cancers, birth defects, impaired immunity, endocrine disruption, and developmental and reproductive effects.
Recycling rates are already low but plastic bags are especially difficult to recycle if not almost impossible since they cannot be put in at-home curbside recycling.
Plastic bags must be recycled separately from other materials.
Plastic bags that are put in at-home curbside recycling end up tangled in sorting equipment. This slows the recycling process, damages, or breaks recycling equipment, and puts workers at risk of harm. The photo shows workers detangling dozens of plastic bags from sorting equipment.