Korean solution

They are a main pollutant to our environment and create damaging effects on endangered aquatic and terrestrial animals.

The bags take hundreds of years to break down and when they do, the smaller fragments absorb toxins that contaminate soil, water and animals upon digestion.

We dump billions of recyclable plastic bags every year into landfill sites and the oceans have thousands of pieces of floating plastic in them, which suffocate and kill so many marine mammals and sea birds every year.

Clean Up Australia Day and the re-usable ‘green bags’ have reduced the number of plastic bags. However, there is still a lot more we can do.

I have just returned from South Korea and was impressed by how stores and supermarkets gave cardboard boxes in which to take your groceries home.

Cardboard boxes can be easily recycled or re-used for storing things.