Find yourself swimming in plastic carrier bags? While some countries are steaming ahead in reducing use, others remain big consumers. Find out how Europe is incentivising change.

An ocean of plastic to eradicate

On average, each person in Europe  uses around 190 plastic bags per year.

Of these 100 billion bags,  8 billion end up in lakes and rivers,

It takes 5 seconds to manufacture this bag,  5 minutes to use it

and 500 years for it to fully decompose.

For example, here in the North Sea, 94% of  the birds have plastic in their stomachs.

Marine animals and birds mistake  the debris for food and ingest it.

Seals, turtles, and various species of birds  are among the unlucky victims.

To combat this scourge  the EU Parliament is currently imposing

a drastic reduction  in the use of plastic bags.

In Denmark and Finland,  each person uses just 4 bags per year,

whereas in Poland, Portugal and Slovakia  the usage is 100 times higher.

For some time now, certain countries have  seen a huge reduction in plastic bag use

A mandatory tax which has put an end  to free plastic bags.

The European Parliament  has adopted this idea

and it will now be implemented  across the European Union.  

Gone are the days of free bags  for every purchase.

It’s time for  environmentally-friendly solutions…

lightweight plastic carrier bags with a  thickness of below 50 microns.

These single-use bags make up the majority  of carrier bags used in the EU.

There will either be  a mandatory charge from 2018,

or a cap of up to 90 bags per citizen  by 2019, reduced to 40 by 2025.

An exception is the very lightweight bags  of a thickness of less than 15 microns,

However, hygiene standards make it difficult  to stop the use of these bags.

So what can be done?  Europeans are examining the options.

The same applies to  oxo-biodegradable bags.

They are a con as although these  bags break down into small fragments,

it doesn’t change the time it take  s for them to fully decompose.

This will likely end up in the great plastic  ocean known as the trash vortex,

It is an area in the North Pacific  which draws in debris,

trapped by currents,  like a whirlpool of waste.