Ugly Numbers

Introduced just over 25 years ago, the ugly truth about our plastic bag addiction is that society's consumption rate is now estimated at well over 500,000,000,000 (that's 500 billion) plastic bags annually, or almost 1 million per minute.

Singapore consumes an estimated 2.5 billion plastic bags each year or 1.7 per person, per day. In other words, the average Singapore uses 530 plastic bags a year. Individual usage is below 1 in developed countries such as the United States (0.9) and Ireland (0.8). These values are worth striving for because plastic bags are a waste of resources.

Singapore has our Bring Your Own Bag Day on the first Wednesday of every month and involves 200 retailers. But amid the complains and cry consumers made about inconvenience and cost impose on them, the initiative barely made an dent in the consumption level. The first Bring Your Own Bag Day, only saved an estimated 100, 000 plastic bags, which is merely 1.4 % of our daily usage of 6.85 million.