When I came across this piece of plastic at Wrightsville Beach, I thought it was just a stray piece of plastic. Then I went to grab it and found that I couldn't pull it without it tearing.
So my kids and I started digging. As we dug, we learned that we were digging out a "Food Lion" plastic bag that someone filled with sand and buried.
(Unfortunately, I don't have more photos because each time we thought we had removed enough sand to pull the bag the bag it would tear. The last thing I wanted was for shreds of a plastic bag to blow away.) Thankfully after digging around the bag enough we were able to get the whole thing!
Did you know that approximately 380 billion single-use plastic bags are used in the US every year? That's more than 1,200 bags per US resident, per year. Even if 99% were recycled, that'd still leave 3,800,000,000 plastic bags littered or in a landfill EVERY SINGLE YEAR. But we're not even close to a 99% recycling rate with plastic bags. The recycling rate for plastic bags is around 1 to 3%.
Not even close.
There are some things that are easy to live without and plastic bags are definitely one of them... do your part and refuse single-use plastic bags by bringing your own or going without.
P.S... If you're in Greensboro, NC, my friend Teresa aka Green Bag Lady will be handing out fabric bags Friday and Saturday! More info here--
Green Bag Lady: Off to North Carolina
20 minutes on October 27, 2013 at Access 20
Litter by weight: 10.9 oz
Cigarette butts: 36
Total amount of cigarette butts removed from Wrightsville Beach, NC in 213 days:
56,529
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