When you do your shopping bring along your own cloth or other type of reusable bag. The average American family uses 900 plastic shopping bags a year. That adds up to 100 billion bags consumed in the United States annually. It takes 504 million gallons of oil to make all of these bags.
They end up being a waste of our nonrenewable oil resources, a source of litter, costing cities millions to clean up, and a hazard to wildlife and marine creatures that confuse them for food. In addition, 99% of the bags are not recycled and will take as much as 1000 years to break down. Of the EPA’s list of 20 chemicals whose production generates the most hazardous waste, 5 of the top 6 were chemicals commonly used by the plastic industry. If the annual US consumption of plastic bags were tied together in a giant chain, it would circle the Earth 760 times!
