Plastic Bags: Environmentally Harmful and Completely Unnecessary
Published January 4, 2012 | 
According to the EPA, between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year. Americans alone throw away over 100 billion bags a year.
Every hour, approximately 200,000 plastic bags are landfilled and may take 1,000 years to break down. For the plastic bags that become litter, rain washes them into bodies of water where they threaten the lives of avian and marine species that can die from consuming or choking on the bags. Plastic pollution travels through our local waterways, eventually reaching the global oceans. On average, 46,000 pieces of plastic are swirling in each square mile of our oceans.
The impacts of plastic bag pollution have ignited a global movement to dramatically reduce the amount of disposable plastic shopping bags. Promoting reusable bags and plastic bag recycling are just one of the many ways to protect our waterways and wildlife. Durango Bag It! works with the public, local, and regional governments to reduce the plastic bag pollution.
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