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

Learn more about how plastic pollution threatens wildlife.

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Researchers supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation studied how components in plastic bags decompose during exposure to sunlight while in water. Their findings are published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Once plastic pollution gets into the environment, its fate is still largely unknown, especially in aquatic ecosystems. Some plastic items, such as polyethylene shopping bags, float in water, which exposes them directly to the sun&#;s rays. 

Researchers have shown that the pure polymers commonly used to make these items produce water-soluble molecules and gases when placed in ultraviolet light, a component of sunlight. However, plastics in consumer goods aren&#;t pure; a variety of carbon-based organic additives and mineral additives are mixed in to give them color or make them more stable. 

Collin Ward of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and colleagues wanted to see how the composition of single-use shopping bags influenced the dissolved compounds generated by sunlight over short periods.

The scientists investigated what happens when polymers and additives used to manufacture plastic bags break down into microscopic molecules that are released into an aquatic environment. 

Their study indicates that the additives can increase how fast solid plastic bags decompose into dissolved compounds -- days rather than months. 

Using plastic bags from retailers, the researchers placed pieces of the bags in containers of water and kept them in the dark or exposed them to simulated sunlight. 

The samples exposed to sunlight released exponentially more compounds, breaking down into water-soluble microscopic materials that varied depending on the additives used in manufacturing.

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