160,000 plastic bags a second

This year 5 trillion plastic bags will be consumed. That’s 160,000 a second! Put one after another they would go around the world 7 times every hour and cover an area twice the size of France.

Most bags are simply thrown out

Less than 1 percent are recycled. They are most often made from Polyethylene that takes centuries to degrade. Each ton of recycled plastic bags saves the energy equivalent of 11 barrels of oil.

12 minutes of use, 1000 years of pollution

It takes up to 1,000 years for a plastic bag to break down. On average, a plastic shopping bag is used for just 12 minutes.

What happens to the plastic bags?

In total, we use 100 million tons of plastic every year. Some 10 percent of this plastic end up in the oceans. An estimated 300 million plastic bags every year end up in the Atlantic Ocean alone.

All that plastic ending up in oceans is not without consequences. 

The plastic soup

In the ocean, the plastic is broken down into tiny pieces. These pieces are eaten by fish and cannot be digested. Consequently the plastic builds up and enters into the food chain.

The plastic waste has also created several “plastic soups” in the world's oceans.

Hundreds of species are affected

Seabirds, turtles, seals, sea lions, whales and fish eat the plastics. The death of one sperm whale found in California (USA) in 2008 was caused by 22.2 kilos of plastic that the whale had eaten. 

Check out the video on plastic bags and their way to the 'Pacific garbage patch'.