Eco facts: Some facts and figures

Some facts and figures

It is estimated that up to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year, more than one million per minute.*

British supermarkets give away approximately 10 billion plastic shopping bags annually. (Estimated cost to retailers is £50 million and of course that cost is passed on to you the shopper.)*

In South Africa, the plastic bag has been described as their national flower thanks to it’s ubiquity.

Even in the UK with the recent drive to recycle our plastic bags, only 1 in 200 is actually recycled. The rest end up in landfill or strewn across the countryside.*

Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they just turn brittle and break up, contaminating soil and waterways and entering the food chain when animals, believing the pieces to be food, ingest them. Some studies have suggested that these plastic particulates also act as a sponge, soaking up even more harmful chemicals such as pesticides and heavy metals which are then released into the animals gut and work their way up the food chain to humans.

Plastic bags floating in the sea resemble jellyfish, a staple part of the diet of many marine mammals. Many thousands of animals die every year from choking on our discarded waste or getting entangled in it and drowning.

Market research has shown that at the right price, up to 80% of the UK’s supermarket shoppers would be prepared to purchase fabric carrier bags. Ecosheek are working with a number of the UK's major retailers to encourage the promotion of sustainable cotton bags as a viable alternative.

30 years ago there was essentially no plastic bag industry, when you went shopping you took your own bag with you, yet today the government is being lobbied by plastic bag manufacturers who threaten job losses if a tax were to be imposed to curtail plastic bag use.

In 2001, the Irish economy consumed 1.2 billion plastic bags per year. The plastic bag tax introduced in 2002 has reduced consumption by 90%. In the 3 months directly following the imposition of the new tax 3.5 million Euros was collected in tax which was then pledged to environmental projects. Unfortunately a lot of retailers are now giving away paper bags instead.*

*Sources – BBC, WRAP (Waste and Resource Action Plan), Wikipedia