Here’s something to consider: the average American will use 22,176 plastic bags in their life (288 in a year, 24 in a month, 6 in a week).
Here are three simple ways to decrease these staggering numbers.
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Reduce: use cloth bags instead of plastic bags. If only 1 in 5 of us stopped using plastic bags in the US, we would save 1.3 trillion plastic bags.
Reuse: save your plastic bags for future visits, as liners for waste baskets, or even lunch bags. Every time you reuse a bag you have halved your plastic bag use.
Recycle: if you can’t reduce or reuse the plastic bags, at least consider recycling them. Today, only 1% of plastic bags are even recycled.
Or we could go the path of countries like China, which by banning plastic bags will save 37 million barrels of oil/year. Or Ireland, which reduced consumption of plastic bags by 90%. Progressive US cities like San Francisco have already initiated bans.
