Every year, an estimated 500-billion plastic bags are used worldwide. That’s an absolutely staggering number. When you take into consideration that just one bag has the potential to damage the environment, the other 499 billion are just overwhelming.

There are around 6-billion people on are planet. So to do the math, each man, woman and child uses around 83 plastic bags per year. Of the 500-billion, 1/5 are used in the United States alone.Plastic bags are difficult and very costly to recycle. For that reason, many end up in landfills where they take more than 300 years on average to photo-degrade.

The bags break down into tiny toxic particles that can easily contaminate the soil and waterways. Once an animal ingests these dangerous toxins, they’re forever integrated into the food chain, damaging animals of all sorts and even eliminating some species before they rise to dominance. These toxins are also very dangerous to humans when ingested in large amounts. All it would take is a few glasses of water per day for a few months for an individual to experience health problems from the poison.

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Scientists estimate that the Earth has been around for more than 4-billion years. In that relatively short timeframe by universe standards, our planet has witnessed more changes take place than any other body in our solar system. Once a desolate place, the Earth was uninhabitable, nothing thrived here but water and ice which almost covered the entire planet. Eventually, climate changes and some geological events produced an environment in which life slowly started to grow and adapt.Over the course of 4-billion years, life of all types has roamed our planet. From the dinosaurs before us to our hairy ancestors, the apes, Earth has been the home of many species. Of all the steps among the evolutionary scale, humans are without a doubt the most deadly to our loving mother. Apes walked upright and became men before the tectonic shifting of the plates moved continents to where we now know them to be on our globe. We were all in one relatively small area as humans. Our species evolved with a few key characteristics and dispositions. We needed to eat, be safe, and procreate. They were early mans only concerns.

As the years passed, the Earth slowly started to fill up with people. As the thinking-man became king of the evolutionary chart, humans started to divide, conquer, and inhabit all the continents in the world. From humble beginnings to over 6-billion people on today’s planet, we’ve caused more than our share of harm to the Earth’s natural resources. People produce waste; it’s just a byproduct of living. Both human waste which occurs naturally through the ingestion and digesting of food, and man-made waste like plastics and chemicals that we dump into the oceans.

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