Emily Packer of Teens Turning Green speaks with Marin IJ reporter Roger Roberts at BYOB Marin's press conference at the Marin County Farmers Market on December 17, 2010.
PROBLEM – IT’S NOT PAPER VS PLASTIC
- Californians use 19 billion plastic carryout bags annually, or 600 per second.
- Fewer than 5% of these bags are recycled.
- Marin residents throw away 138 million bags annually; these end up in our landfill, streets, and parks.
- Each year, 14 million trees are cut to produce 10 billion paper grocery bags.
- It takes more than four times the energy to manufacture a paper bag as it does to make a plastic bag.
- Paper bags use more space in landfills than plastic bags.
- Plastic bags and their scraps are among the most frequently-found items of litter on street and coastline cleanups, and in scientific trawls of the Pacific Ocean.
- Non-biodegradable plastic bags, while lighter and less energy-intensive than paper bags in manufacture, have an unsustainable legacy, including the potential of long-term leaching of plastic chemicals into the environment.