Plastic bags are used on average for about 12 minutes each. Yet for this passing convenience they do a huge amount of environmental damage.
Consider:
- In the UK, DEFRA estimate we use 10 billion plastic bags a year, of which at least 200 million end up polluting streets, beaches and countryside.
- Worldwide we get through between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags a year – that’s about 300 per adult.
- As well as taking energy and emissions to produce, plastic bags take between 450 and 1000 years to decay.
- When they do, the plastic just breaks into smaller & smaller particles that continue to pollute soil, rivers, lakes & oceans, where they poison marine life (not surprising Australia and Ireland have already legislated to ban them).
- Even ‘degradeable’ plastic bags leave these toxic residues behind.
Check out the following websites for information on bio-degradable plastics, campaigns and other Plastic Bag Free Towns:
- Modbury
www.plasticbagfree.com - Hebden Bridge
www.plasticbagfreehebdenbridge.co.uk - We are not responsible for the content of external websites
Hay Festival Winter Weekend
Saturday 1st December, 12:00pm
To launch the campaign to make Hay plastic-carrier-bag-free, Sue Kinsey of the Marine Conservation Society introduces the film that inspired Rebecca Hosking to make her hometown of Modbury the first town in Europe to ban plastic bags. This film is a BBC Natural History Unit Production.
Click the image below to view a trailer:
