Why We Should Plastic Bags Be Banned

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Hawaii just became the first state in the U.S. to completely ban plastic bags from being distributed at grocery store check-outs. California attempted to pass a similar ban that's now being delayed, and at least 132 cities in 18 states have banned plastic shopping bags.

The U.S. is late to this party -- the whole EU, China, India, Australia, Rwanda, and many other countries have already instituted full-on bans on plastic bags. Plastics have a huge environmental cost, and this is one simple step we can take toward fixing it. Here are 9 reasons we should ban the bag:

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Plastic bags last forever (literally), and we use SO MANY OF THEM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koETnR0NgLY
Approximately 100 billion plastic bags are thrown away in the U.S. every year, which is the equivalent of dumping almost 12 million barrels of oil into the environment. Globally, we use an estimated 1 trillion plastic bags every year -- nearly two bags per minute. The average "use-time" for a bag is 12 minutes, but plastic doesn't decompose. Like, ever. So after just 12 minutes of use, plastic bags continue to haunt us indefinitely.
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Lots of animals, including sea turtles, mistake the plastic bags for food because they resemble jellyfish.

One study found that one in three leatherback sea turtles have plastic in their stomachs -- and it's usually plastic bags. When a sea turtles swallows a plastic bag, its digestive track gets blocked, which causes the turtle to become buoyant so it can no longer dive for food. This causes thousands of sea turtles to slowly starve to death while floating on the surface of the ocean.

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