The damage that single use plastic bags cause to our environment both on land and in the sea is well documented these days needing little further debate. However, what is needed is action, a positive response that leads to an ultimate solution. In the case of persuading consumers to break with the culture and everyday practice of using once and then discarding plastic bags we knew we would have to produce and promote a viable and effective solution.
Nows a day, consumers use more than 500 billion plastic shopping bags per year worldwide. That amounts to almost 1 million bags per minute. These single-use bags end up in our landfills and drains. Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, they photo-degrade. Photo-degradation is a chemical change in which light absorption reduces the useful properties of materials, particularly polymers. This means they break down into small toxic bits that pollute our soil, rivers, lakes and oceans. Because plastic bags require vast amounts of oil to produce, they contribute to expensive dependence on foreign countries. That solution came in the form of the very first and now highly successful reusable and recyclable bag alternative. Because of the encouragement of reusable shopping bags by governments and supermarkets, reusable shopping bags have become one of the new fashion trends. The apparel industry also contributed to make it popular to have fashionable reusable shopping bags instead of disposable plastic bags.
