Plastics have been the most consumed materials of human societies in the recent decades (Zhou 80-86). There is a wide variety of plastics on earth, but the one that has been raising huge controversy in the world is plastic bags. .
Plastic bags were first introduced in 1997. Plastic bags were a success over paper bags, and they were cheaper and less likely to tear (Magaziner 10-11). Plastic bags have been used annually in different countries. According to the Market News China uses about 3 billion plastic bags daily and about 3 million tons are being thrown away (Liu 1). Australia uses around 4 billion plastic bags in a year, and about 2-3% get recycled (Ginis 91). According to the wall street journal, American consumers go through about 100 billion plastic shopping bags (Ruch 68+). In the UK about 9 to 17 billion plastic bags are used every year. Globally we take home about 500 billion and trillion every year (Williams 30-33). We are using millions and billions of plastic bags each years, so where do this plastic bags end up?.
Plastic bags are polluting our oceans and seas, and variety of marine organism gets affected. Nick Nuttall, spokesman for the Environmental Programme's said, "Plastic bags is a real problem and they server little or no purpose except to choke the oceans and the environment" ("world"). According to the environmental protection agency an estimate of 7% plastic bags get recycled 2009, and the 93% weren't able to biodegrade easily end up in our oceans (Santarpio 98). .
Plastic bags are a great threat to our oceans, because many marine animals misidentify them as food. A small bit can be deadly. Plastic bags block the digestive tract, causing the animal to a slow and agonizing death; some marine animals get strangled to death when bags get wrapped around their bodies. Thousands of marine animals including sea turtles, seals, sea birds, dolphins and sharks die because of plastic bags (Magaziner 20-21).
