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Contact us
For more info, help or advice, email     bagsnot@waitakere.govt.nz

Facts and figures

• Many cities and countries around the world have banned plastic shopping bags.
• Up to one trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide every year.
• Less than one percent of bags are recycled. It costs more to recycle a bag than to produce a new one.
• Plastic shopping bags are made from polyethylene – a thermoplastic made from oil. Reducing plastic bags will decrease foreign oil dependency.
• China is expected to save 37 million barrels of oil each year due to its ban on free plastic bags.
• Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales, dolphins, seals and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food.
• There are currently over 46,000 pieces of plastic waste in every square mile of the world's oceans.
• During the manufacture of plastic bags, benzene gas, a known carcinogen, enters the atmosphere.
• Plastic can take centuries to decompose. When it is burned, poisonous dioxins enter the soil and natural water supply.
• Plastic bags caused severe flooding in Bangladesh by blocking up the drains.
• About 84 pieces of broken down plastics were found in a fish that was 2.5 inches long in the Pacific.
• 8.7 plastic checkout bags contain enough embodied petroleum energy alone to drive a car one kilometre.
• Plastic bags have been found floating north of the Arctic Circle.
• Plastic bags account for over 10% of the debris washed up on the United States coastline.
• Plastic bags photodegrade. Over time they break down into smaller, more toxic petro-polymers, which eventually contaminate soils and waterways.
• A "plastic soup" of waste the size of Texas is floating between Hawaii and Japan, which reportedly contains 46 pounds of plastic to every single pound of zooplankton. Wind currents are slowly moving the floating debris towards the centre of the Northern Pacific.

Bags Not! supporters

If you are a Waitakere business providing your customers with alternatives to plastic bags and want to become a Bags Not! supporter, email us at bagsnot@waitakere.govt.nz so we can add you to our Supporting Businesses page.