How to Rid America of the Problem of Plastic Bags
How often do you visit the supermarket? Research indicates that the average American consumer takes home almost 1,500 shopping bags a year. The U.S., as a whole, goes through 100 billion single-use plastic bags annually; worldwide, the number reaches over one trillion. It gets worse: less than 5 percent of plastic grocery bags are recycled within the U.S. That's a huge problem because the high-density polyethylene used to make them can take more than 1,000 years to degrade.