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Island Naturals Bans Plastic Bags
Island Naturals stores now offer a ¢25 per bag credit to customers
who
bring in their own re-usable bags (i.e. canvas, plastic, paper,
backpack). There is also a ¢25 fee per paper bag if the customer
chooses to use paper.
BAG FACTS:
> Of the approximate 500 BILLION plastic bags used each year worldwide,
about 4 BILLION of them become general litter! That’s a million a minute.
> Of that 500 billion worldwide, Americans use over 100 BILLION!
> One estimation says that 12 million barrels of oil are required to make the
100 billion plastic bags that Americans go through each year.
> If each American family used one less plastic bag per week, we’d save
3.8 billion bags per year.
> If one out of four Americans used a reuseable shopping bag, we could save
3 million barrels of oil (that’s about 105 milion gallons of oil).
> The oil that’s used to make 14 plastic bags could drive a car for one mile.
> Up to 100,000 marine animals are killed per year by plastic bags.
> In some parts of the ocean, there are six pounds of plastic bags for every
pound of plankton.
> It can take up to 1000 years for the toxic bits of plastic bags to decompose.
> In 2002, the Republic of Ireland introduced a 15¢ tax on plastic bags:
Before the tax, they used 1.2 billion plastic bags per year. After the tax, there
was a 90% drop in bag consumption. Almost $10 million was raised in the
first year, litter was dramatically reduced and about 18 million liters of oil
saved. (’Irish bag tax hailed success,’ bbcnews.com, Aug. 20, 2002)
> from same article: In March of the same year, Bangladesh banned plastic
bags after they were found to be a factor in two major floods 10 years apart.
> Other countries around the world banning or instituting a tax on plastic
bags: the whole continent of Africa, India, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Italy,
Australia, Scotland and the rest of the UK.
> Here in the US: San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Boston and
Annapolis, MD have taken measures to ban or reduce plastic bags.
If you think paper is the environmentally safer alternative, think again:
> Compared to a plastic bag, making a paper bag emits 70% more global
warming gasses, creates 50 times more water pollution, uses four times more
raw materials and consumes 3.5 times more energy.
> 80% of all paper bags end up in landfills where they can’t biodegrade
because of the lack of oxygen under all the other rubbish.
> Paper bags cost the landfill more than plastic bags because paper takes up
more space by weight and volume.
LEARN MORE-- All information above was taken from these websites:
simplygreensolutions.com, onebagatatime.com, bagsontherun.com,
reusablebags.com, greensak.com, notamall.com, re-bag.com and
newspaper articles from:
news.bbc.co.uk and sfgate.com
Aloha Nui
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