Shopping bags - key facts

• In the UK, over 13 billion bags are issued every year to shoppers
• This means that each person receives roughly 220 bags a year
• Only one in 200 of these are recycled, meaning that billions of shopping bags are sent to landfill every year
• Many of these can take over 400 years to break down.

It is estimated that reducing the number of plastic bags in the UK by just 25 per cent will eliminate 58,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year - the equivalent of taking 18,000 cars off the road.