Note 1-- Say 'No' to plastic bags

People use plastic bags when go shopping in supermarket. Not talking about how long we have been use it. But just look at how much we use it. Only in Australia in 2002, the nation consumes 6.9 billion plastic bags or 36,850 tonnes of plastic each year, which equates to one bag per person per day. Supermarkets consume 53% of plastic bag and the rest of the bag is consumed by retail outlets such as fast food stores. According to this data, if each person consume 1 plastic everyday, one day there will be 6.5billion plastic waste generated and in one year time, there will be 2372.5billion plastic bags or 12.7 million tons of plastic consumed.

Plastic bag from supermarket

How much energy we need to produce such amount of plastic bags? It is said driving a car 1 km equates producing 8.7 plastic bags. The estimated one year consumption of plastic bags equals 272.7billion km for a car. If we remove all the plastic bags, it equate removing 13.6 million cars from the road. How huge the energy it is! Saying that making 1 plastic bag involves 0.48 megajouls, then the whole year energy consumption just by making plastic bag equals to intalling 36GW solar panel, which is more than twice of the installation in the whole year of 2010.

Plastic factory

Plastic in the ocean

Polluted river bank

Let's together cut our plastic bag consumption. Imagine, if everyone cut consumption by half, it equals to installing 18GW solar panel for the world. I understand that the effect by individual is small, let's do it together. Firstly, please reject or bring a bag whenever you go to supermarket. Secondly, if you do so, please just post the number of plastic bags you save in the following link every time. I will post it every month, to see as humans together, how much energy we saved, and how much greener our life becomes!!


(Click here to record your progress)


(the data is from this website)