Single use plastic shopping bags have been an environmental and wildlife disaster since their introduction. Worldwide over 1 TRILLION bags are consumed each year. They are a major cause for the death of an estimated 1 million animals and birds killed each year by plastic debris.
Most plastic bags are not recycled as it is not economical, its costs roughly $4,000 to process and recycle one ton of plastic bags, the resulting product can then be sold for only $32.
In addition to killing wildlife through entanglement or ingestion, the bags are also an environmental hazard, they do not biodegrade but rather photodegrade, meaning that over time they break down into small pieces, containing toxic petro-polymers and ending up in our drinking water and releasing these toxins into farmland.
Finally, because plastic bags are made from oil, reducing the use of them would reduce our dependency on foreign oil and the demand for arctic and offshore drilling.