According to the American Plastics Council 80 percent of groceries in the US are packed in plastic bags.

　　“The numbers are becoming huge,” said Vincent Cobb, a businessman from Chicago who set up “reusable bags. com” on the Internet. He notes that consumers use between 500 billion and 1 trillion plastic bags per year worldwide.

　　Some experts believe that all these bags harm the environment. Plastic takes hundreds of years to break down and, as it does so, poisonous materials are released into the water and soil.

　　Further damage is caused if plastic bags enter the sea. For example, endangered sea turtles cannot tell the bags from jellyfish(水母), their main source of food, and often choke on（噎死 ）them.

　　Floating plastic bags have been spotted as far north as the Arctic Ocean and as far south as the southern end of South America. One expert predicts that, within ten years, plastic bags will wash up in Antarctica!

　　However, this kind of bag does have its advantages.

　　“Plastic grocery bags are some of the most reused things around the house,” explained Laurie Kusek of the American Plastics Council.

　　According to the Film and Bag Federation, a trade group in the US plastics industry, paper bags use more energy and create more waste than plastic bags. Plastic bags require 40 per cent less energy to produce and cause 70 per cent less air pollution, the group explained. They also release as much as 94 percent less waste into the water than paper ones.

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