green facts 4

it is still common practice, in a lot of supermarkets all over the world, to hand out plastic bags to shoppers. apparently, the average time of use of such a bag is 20 mns and it is rarely reused thereafter. when you also know that it takes 400 years for such a bag to decompose...

apparently, there's an area of waste the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean, between San Fransisco, Japan and Hawaii. it's called the North Pacific Trash Vortex, and is made up of 80% of plastic and weighs about 3.5 million tons. if that wasn't bad enough, floating plastic desintegrates into very, very small particles, microscopic even, and is thus mixed up with zooplankton, the basis of the marine food chain, and causes poisoning. whales and turtles are also at risk, as they both feed on jellyfish and that, apparently, nothing looks more like a jellyfish than a plastic bag...