Somewhere between 500 billion and 1

trillion plastic shopping bags are

consumed worldwide each year.
 Plastic shopping bags are
made from polyethylene,
a thermoplastic made from oil.
Less than 1% of those bags are
recycled.

Why?
It costs $4,000.00 to process and
recycle 1 tonne of plastic bags.

That same 1 tonne of recycled

plastic sells on the commodities
market for $32.00.
Where do they go instead?
 Plastic bags account for over 10
percent of the debris washed up on
world coastlines.
 Over time they break down into
smaller, more toxic petro-polymers.
 In 2005 Rwanda
banned plastic bags
 Bangladesh has
banned plastic bags
Western India, Botswana, Kenya,
Tanzania, South Africa, Taiwan,
and Singapore have also banned
or are moving toward banning the
plastic bag.
China has banned free plastic bags
That ban saves China 37 million
barrels of oil each year.
What can you do?
 If every person in this meeting
avoided using just 1 plastic bag
each day, how many bags would
be saved in 1 year?
 If every SNC-Lavalin employee
avoided using 1 plastic bag,
that’s 45,000 bags saved today.
315,000 bags this week…
1,350,000 bags this month...
More than 162,000,000
bags in a year.