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Society is addicted to throwaway plastic bags. Californians use 19 billion plastic bags every year. This generates over 147,000 tons of unnecessary waste that ends up in our landfills, chokes local rivers and storm drain systems, and enters the ocean, threatening marine life.1
Although single-use plastic bags are designed to be used for only moments, plastic lasts hundreds of years or longer in the environment and may never truly biodegrade. Once discarded, the vast majority of plastic products end up in landfills, rivers and storm drains, and eventually the marine ecosystem, threatening wildlife.2
During a three-hour cleanup on International Coastal Cleanup Day in 2008 plastic bags ranked second in top debris items found on beaches, lakes and streams, accounting for 1.4 million bags total.
We cannot recycle our way out of this problem: most plastic products are not economically viable to recycle. There is a lack of available domestic plastic bag recycling markets.3 In fact, the majority of plastic bags that are recovered to be recycled are sold to foreign markets including China. 4,5
Less than 5% of plastic bags distributed in California are currently recycled.6 Despite legislation to expand statewide recycling programs for plastic bags at grocery stores, evidence shows that these laws have not had a significant impact on recycling rates or led to greater use of reusable bags.7 In Los Angeles County, over 90% of the bags collected in municipalities surveyed ended up being shipped to a landfill rather than recycled, due to contamination from food or pet waste, and their tendency to jam recycling machinery.8
Each reusable bag has the potential to eliminate the need for hundreds of plastic bags over its lifetime.
Plastic Bags Are Destructive to the Environment and Harm Wildlife
Plastic bags don’t biodegrade. Instead, they break down into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic when exposed to sunlight and water, but never truly go away.9 Discarded plastic bags are so prevalent in our environment that in a catch basin cleanup of along the Los Angeles River it was found that plastic film and bags comprised 43% percent of all trash collected.10,11 In the San Francisco Bay, volunteers collected 15,000 plastic bags in just one three-hour period during 2008 Coastal Cleanup Day.12
Inland and urban areas in particular are the most blighted by plastic bags as these white tumbleweeds collect along roads, alleys, and trees. Many of these areas are densely populated and tend to be low-income areas.
Plastic bags (which resemble jelly fish in the water) or pieces of plastic bags can easily be mistaken for food or prey by seabirds, marine mammals, fish, and sea turtles. Littered plastic items harm hundreds of wildlife species, some of which are threatened or endangered species. A 1997 study found that at least 267 species have been affected by ingestion of or entanglement in marine debris worldwide.13 Currently, 86% of all sea turtle species, 44% of all seabird species, and 43% of all marine mammal species, have had reported problems of entanglement or ingestion of marine debris.14 Plastic bags were the most common plastic item found in the digestive tract of 408 leatherback sea turtles according to a 2009 study that reviewed historical necropsies.15
The typical plastic grocery bag is manufactured from polyethylene, a byproduct of petroleum and natural gas - both nonrenewable resources that create more greenhouse gases and increase our dependency on foreign oil.16 The energy used to make about 9 plastic bags is equivalent to the energy it takes to drive a car one kilometer, or 0.62 miles.17 To put this into perspective, over 79 pounds of CO2 are emitted from the number of plastic bags the average shopper uses annually, given a shopper makes 52 trips to the store each year using about 10 plastic bags per trip.18
Plastic Bags Costs Us
Plastic litters our beaches, exacts a toll on our environment, and costs cities money to clean up. It is a threat to all ocean-dependent, tourism-oriented economies. California’s ocean economy alone is valued at $43 billion.19
Before San Francisco implemented its plastic bag reduction ordinance, a 2004 cost analysis commissioned by the city showed that $8.5 million was spent annually to deal with plastic bag litter—that equates to roughly 17 cents for every bag distributed in the city.20
Given the 19 billion plastic bags used every year statewide and extrapolating from San Francisco’s analysis, Californians spend at least $3.23 billion every year in clean up costs alone--that translates to the average taxpayer paying about $88 per year per.21
Public agencies in California spend in excess of $300 million annually in litter abatement.23
Southern California cities have spent in excess of $1.7 billion in meeting Total Maximum Daily Loads for trash-impaired waterways.24
Consumers should also remember that retailers currently embed the 3-5 cent per a plastic bag price in the cost of food, costing an individual up to $30 per year.25
What Is the Solution?
REUSABLE BAGS are a long-term practical solution: A single reusable bag has the potential to replace over 1,000 single-use bags in its lifetime26, saving a significant amount of resources. Reusable bags are much less likely to enter the litter stream27, and can last for years. Designed for many uses, reusable bags also emit fewer carbon dioxide emissions and require less energy in their production and manufacture than single-use bags and even plastic HDPE bags made from 50% recycled content.28
Recycling is NOT the solution. While the plastics industry continues to advocate and implement recycling initiatives29, recycling rates in California for plastic bags are less than 5%30. Not only is recycling plastic bags ineffective, it is also costly for little-to-no gain.
Paper is NOT the solution: While recycling rates for paper bags are higher than those for plastic bags31, paper bags are not a sufficient alternative. The production of paper bags contributes to natural resource depletion, greenhouse gas emissions, and additional waterborne wastes from the pulping and paper making process.32
Compostable bags are NOT the solution: Switching to compostable or biodegradable plastic bags may seem like a great idea, but these types of bags do not degrade in the ocean.33,34,35 In other words, they do not act any differently than regular plastic bags. Instead, these bags require high heat and bacteria, such as those present in large-scale composting facilities, to break down into constituents that assimilate back into the environment.
Encourage your community to make the switch to reusable bags by:
- Supporting Heal the Bay’s efforts to pass local and statewide legislation to reduce single-use plastic, paper and compostable bags in the environment. (Learn more by visiting our Action Alert on Marine Debris Legislation).
- Participating in A Day Without A Bag Campaign, a grassroots effort to educate holiday shoppers to go bag-free every December.
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