Did You Know? |
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 | According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. goes through 100 billion plastic shopping bags annually. (Estimated cost to retailers is $4 billion) |
| According to the industry publication Modern Plastics, Taiwan consumes 20 billion bags a year—900 per person. |  |
 | According to Australia’s Department of Environment, Australians consume 6.9 billion plastic bags each year—326 per person. An estimated .7% or 49,600,000 end up as litter each year. |
| Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food. |  |
 | As part of Clean Up Australia Day, in one day nearly 500,000 plastic bags were collected. |
| Windblown plastic bags are so prevalent in Africa that a cottage industry has sprung up harvesting bags and using them to weave hats, and even bags. According to the BBC, one group harvests 30,000 per month. | |
 | According to David Barnes, a marine scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, plastic bags have gone ""from being rare in the late 80s and early 90s to being almost everywhere from Spitsbergen 78° North [latitude] to Falklands 51° South [latitude]. |
| Plastic bags are among the 12 items of debris most often found in coastal cleanups, according to the nonprofit Center for Marine Conservation. |  |
| In 2001, Ireland consumed 1.2 billion plastic bags, or 316 per person. An extremely successful plastic bag consumption tax, or PlasTax, introduced in 2002 reduced consumption by 90%. Approximately 18,000,000 liters of oil have been saved due to this reduced production. Governments around the world are considering implementing similar measures. |
| July 2003, ReusableBags.com goes live, advancing the mainstream adoption of reusable shopping bags. | |
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