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WHY PLASTIC BAGS?

  • They Are Cheap

    • only costing us, the consumer, around 2-5​ cents per bag

  • Now You May Not Know How Much You Spend On Plastic Bags Per Year​

    • the average person will spend ​anywhere from $13 - $43 on bags per year

  • But There Is A Way Around This​

    • We can use reusable bags, ​which cost around $7 

  • Now Think About It

    • Why spend 2-5 cents on a bag you will use for 12 minutes, when you can spend $7 on a bag that you can use for years!

  • Shoppers worldwide are using approximately 500 billion single-use plastic bags per year

    • That comes out to over one million per minute

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PLASTIC BAGS MAY BE THE BIGGEST PROBLEM FOR OUR ENVIRONMENT

About 1.7 billion tons of  harmful crude oil is burned each year to produce plastic bags. A single plastic bag can take between 400 to 1,000 years to break down in the environment.

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BAG THE BAGS

USE REUSABLE BAGS

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ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT:

  • Over 100 million marine animals are killed each year due to plastic debris in the ocean

    • Just like the one pictured above ​

  • Approximately 1 million seabirds also die from plastic

  • 85% of all sea turtles will be injured or killed by plastics in their lifetimes

  • Scientists have declared 200 areas as “dead zones” where no life organisms can now grow

  • World wide, 13,000-15,000 pieces of plastic are dumped into the ocean every day

  • Of the 260 million tons of plastic the world produces each year, about 10 percent ends up in the Ocean

  • In the middle of the Atlantic, there is an area that spans the distance between Virginia to Cuba called the Great Atlantic Garbage Patch

    • ​It has about 26 million plastic particles per square kilometer

Certified by Nikki De Campe

                    A Senior Lab Technician from the University of Western Australia, Perth 

Read more about her findings 

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CONTACT US

We are students from Rocky Hill School that are trying help make a difference in our environment.

530 Ives Road, East Greenwich, Rhode Island

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NIKKI'S FINDINGS

  Plastic products, such as single use plastic bags and water bottles, are accumulating in the marine environment at an alarming rate. There is no area of the ocean that has been left untouched by plastic; even the most remote islands are often littered with plastic bottles, shoes, toothbrushes, fishing floats and other rubbish that has been washed up by ocean currents that travel around the globe. The effects of plastic accumulating in our oceans are wide spread and devastating at all levels of the ecosystem; for example

     - Marine animals such as turtles, seals and sea birds mistake plastic for food. If they don’t choke on the plastic when they eat it, it stays in their stomach, undigested, and they eventually starve to death as there is no room for real food. Many species of marine mammals, reptiles and birds are endangered, and the ingestion of plastic is contributing to their deaths in large numbers. This in turn may lead to the extinction of rare ocean dwelling species.

      - Plastic stays in the environment for a very long time. Over many years, large plastics break down into smaller and smaller particles, called microplastics. Tiny organisms such as plankton absorb these particles into their bodies. Plankton makes up the base of the food chain, so when other small fish eat the plankton, they also take on the chemicals from the microplastic. This process continues up along the food chain, until eventually humans are consuming these chemicals and microplastics themselves.

     - Vast amounts of plastic in the ocean can also cause physical injury to marine life. Animals can become entangled in plastic bags and fishing nets, inhibiting their ability to swim. This can lead to animals drowning, or starving, as they cannot swim fast enough to catch prey. Small mammals, sharks and birds can also get stuck in plastic rings and as they continue to grow, the plastic cuts into their skin or can choke them. The sheer amount of plastic in the ocean is also obstructing the habitat of marine creatures, so they have less areas in good condition for hunting, resting, and breeding.

  The amount of plastic in our oceans is a serious global issue, and it is all of our responsibilities to do what we can to solve it and to preserve our precious marine environment. Everyone has the ability to contribute to the solution through simple measures such as investing in re-usable shopping bags, water bottles and coffee cups; if everyone in the world re-used even these three items, it would make a massive difference to the amount of single use plastic that is thrown away everyday. Reduce, reuse, recycle!!

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