Plastic Bag Facts
- Australians use 6.9 billion plastic bags every year
- 3% (180 million) are being recycled annually
- 96.3% (6.65 billion) bags are sent to landfill annually
- 230,000 bags are dumped in landfill each hour
- 0.7% (50-80 million) bags are littered annually
- Australians are the second highest producers of waste, per person, in the world, each sending almost 690kgs of waste to landfill each year
- Plastic kills up to 1 million seabirds,100 000 sea mammals and countless fish each year worldwide. When the animal dies and decays the plastic is free again to repeat the deadly cycle. (Source: Clean Up Australia)
Some sea-turtles, which normally eat jellyfish, make a fatal mistake when they find dumped plastic bags.