It is estimated to take between 15. and 1,000 years for the average plastic bag to decompose.
Animals can confuse floating bags with sea life to eat, such as plankton and jellyfish. Once they eat it, the plastic clogs up their digestive tract. The animals typically starve to death. Other animals may drown after they are entangled in plastic bags.
The cost of recycling plastic bags is relatively high and many recyclers will not accept them.
The EPA estimates only 2% of all plastic bags are recycled.
If you think paper bags are a better option, you should reconsider. The United States chops down million trees per year to make the pulp to produce paper bags.
Paper bags produce double the atmospheric waste as plastic bags, so they are not really a better option for the environment.
Thrown away plastic bags have shown up as far away as the Arctic Circle and as far south as the Falkland Islands, the British Antarctic Survey reports.
Plastic bags do not always remain in landfills due to their light weight. They often flutter away and are stuck in trees and littering our coasts.
Petroleum products are used to make plastic bags, which are nonrenewable resources.
Plastic bags comprise 10% of the washed up garbage that pollutes American coastlines.
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