A person's use of a plastic check-out bag can be counted in minutes - however long it takes to get groceries from the shops to their homes. These bags, however, can last for hundreds of years.

Combine the growing number of plastic bags used every year with the time it takes for them to break down and you have a major environmental problem.

Whether it's inadvertent or deliberate, plastic bag litter creates many problems. Bags get caught in fences and median strips. They end up blocking drains and trapping birds. When eaten they kill livestock.

At Bathurst's Mt Panorama race track, they even disable racing cars.

In the marine environment, plastic bag litter is lethal, killing thousands of whales, turtles and other sea life every year.

Planet Ark aims to show councils, retailers, communities and individuals how to reduce their use of plastic check-out bags.

Doing away with plastic bags is easier than you think. Planet Ark has worked with communities like Coles Bay, Kangaroo Valley, Huskisson, Oyster Bay and others to ban plastic check-out bags in all of their retail outlets. If these towns can live without plastic bags, then maybe yours can too.

Please join our campaign. This site will show you how.

Jon Dee
Founder, Planet Ark