The average American family takes home almost 1,500 plastic shopping bags a year.

According to Waste Management, only 1 percent of plastic bags are returned for recycling. That means that the average family only recycles 15 bags a year; the rest ends up in landfills as litter.

One in three leatherback sea turtles has been found with plastic in their stomachs.

If you joined them end on end they would circumnavigate the globe 4,200 times.

46,000 pieces of plastic in every square mile of ocean.

It costs US$4,000 to recycle 1 ton of plastic bags and you get a product that can be sold on the commodities market for US$32. We must stop them because recycling is not viable.

13,000-15,000 pieces of plastic are dumped into the ocean every day.

Every year, 6.4 million tons are dumped into the ocean. This is the same as 3,200 kilometers of trucks each loaded with garbage.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”

On average we only recycle one plastic bag in every 200 we use.