YIKES! WHAT ARE WE DOING?1. The average plastic bag gets used for 12 minutes. 2. We use plastic bags for minutes, yet they persist in our environment for over 500 years.3. Over 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) single-use plastic bags are used every year.4. Less than 5% of single-use plastic bags are currently being recycled nationwide. 5. Up to 80% of pollution in waterways is plastic; causing over 100,000 marine animal deaths per year.6. America’s plastic bag use is enough to go around the equator 1,330 times.7. The average American uses around 500 plastic bags per year compared to 4 per person in Denmark.8. Each year, Americans use 30,000,000,000 plastic bags requiring 12 million barrels of oil.9. Each year, Americans use 10,000,000,000 paper bags requiring about 14 million trees.10.Each high-quality reusable bag has the potential to eliminate over 1,000 single-use bags.

OH NO! MICHIGAN’S CRAZY LAW…Michigan has recently banned plastic bag bans. It is now illegal to ban single-use bags in Michigan! The state has passed this new law which prevents local governments from banning the use of not only plastic bags but pretty much any kind of disposable container, no matter what it's made of. The Michigan Restaurant Association (MRA) was one of the lobby groups pushing for this ban. Apparently industry is more important than our state’s well-being. Michigan has gone in the opposite direction of protecting our natural resources! Read below on how to oppose and resist this environmental disaster.

TAKE ACTION NOW! BE THE CHANGE! DEMAND THE CHANGE!Use reusable bags/baskets (sturdy plastic, cloth or canvas).

Recycle or reuse 100% of your single-use plastic bags… every single one!

Push for local supermarkets to offer INCENTIVES when shoppers use reusable bags:

A weekly raffle to reward shoppers with reusable bags (coupon, gift card, or discount)

For every reusable bag utilized at checkout, subtract $0.05 from total bill

Ask store managers how much they spend on plastic-bags. Demand alternatives!

Make sure to use any reusable bag for at least 5 years!

Walden Green Montessori - Capstone Program

PROS:• They are convenient• They are durable and can be used more than once• They take up less space in a landfill than paper bags (Washington Post)• It takes 91% less energy to recycle a pound of plastic than it takes to recycle a pound of paper. (Recycling rates

of either type of disposable bag are extremely low, with rates of 10-15% for paper and 1-3% for plastic.)

CONS:• 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used every year, worldwide• About 1 million plastic bags are used every minute.• A single plastic bag can take 20 to 1,000 years to degrade• The U.S. goes through 100 billion single-use plastic bags. This costs retailers about $4 billion a year• Plastic bags remain toxic even after they break down• Every square mile of ocean has about 46,000 pieces of plastic floating in it.• The average family accumulates 60 plastic bags in only four trips to the grocery store• Ten percent of the plastic produced every year worldwide winds up in the ocean. 70% of which finds its way to the

ocean floor, where it will likely never degrade.• 80% of Americans choose Plastic over Paper.• 100 billion plastic bags are thrown away in America each year.• 12 million barrels of oil are needed for 100 billion bags• The oil used in America for plastic bags is greater than the entire oil demand of Iceland, or North Korea.• 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide.• San Francisco had a cleanup effort, and figured out that in the end, it cost them 17 cents to clean up one plastic

bag. Multiplied by 100 billion, you end up with 1.7 trillion dollars spent cleaning up plastic bags in the US.• Only 1% of plastic bags are recycled• Usually "recycling" a plastic bag means that the bags are shipped to a foreign country with lax to nonexistent

"recycling policy," and just burnt instead.• A bag-tax would greatly reduce use - Washington D.C. put a 5 cent fee on all disposable bags and saw an 80%

reduction. Ireland did the same, but a 33 cent tax instead, and cut consumption 94% within a year.• 4 billion plastic bags end up as liter annually – if we tied the plastic bags together it would circle the earth 63

times – that is approximately 1,792,000 miles!! (the circumference of the earth is approximately 28,000 miles around the equator!)

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