Plastic bags facts taken from clean up australia:

- Plastic bags are manufactured from non-renewable resources - oil and gas. - Just 8.7 checkout bags contain enough embodied petroleum energy to drive a car 1 km - If plastic is not recycled, this embodied energy is lost from the resource chain. - Many thousands of marine mammals and seabirds die every year around the world as a result of plastic litter. When the animal dies and decays the plastic is free again to repeat the deadly cycle. - There are 2 reasons that plastic bags are particularly problematic in the litter stream: 1. They last from 20 - 1 000 years. 2. They escape and float easily in air and water, travelling long distances.