In China, plastic bag litter is know as white pollution. The country used about 3 billion plastic bags each year, which required 37 million barrels of crude oil to produce. In January 2008, China’s parliament prohibited shops from handing them out, with the threaten of a fine for those who didn’t comply. The result? 40 million fewer bags used or a reduction of 66 percent.

And this isn’t the only tactic that has worked. In 2002, Ireland put a 15p surcharge on plastic bags, which resulted in an impressive 90 percent reduction. This week, Northern Ireland’s environmental minister proposed a 15p tax on plastic bags to follow suit, and this month some stores will start a three-month trial charging 5p per plastic bag.

Now when will the U.S. jump on board?  Click here to read more

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We recently expressed delight at finding out that China had decided to join the ranks of nations who’ve outlawed disposable plastic bags. These petrochemical-based bags currently choke our ecosystem to the tune of 500 billion a year worldwide, causing immeasurable damage to the earth and its inhabitants. While we continue to encourage everyone to stock up on reusable plastic bags like EcoBags’ Recycled Cotton Canvas Tote, we’re thrilled to discover that a Canadian teenager has come up with a natural solution to the plastic bag problem we’ve already created.

For his high school science project, 16 year-old Daniel Burd’s goal was to create some way to deal with the mountains of plastic bags that faced him every time he opened a closet door.

Burd decided to test his assumption that microorganisms were what caused plastic to eventually degrade, attempting to isolate the ones responsible for plastic’s breakdown.  His first step was to grind the plastic bags into a powder, mixing it with household chemicals, yeast, tap water, and dirt to encourage the growth of the microbes. After isolating the plastic-degrading microbes, he continued to add them in more and more concentrated amounts to shredded plastic, eventually achieving an impressive 43% rate of degradation in six weeks.

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