Every year on July 3, International Plastic Bag free day is observed to raise awareness around this highly important issue.
The first International Plastic Bag Free Day was observed on July 3, 2008, when Rezero, a member of Zero Waste Europe (ZWE), initiated it. The holiday was only observed in Catalonia in its inaugural year. However, a year later, ZWE introduced the International Plastic Bag Free Day to the European Union.
Their effective campaigns were created over time, but the organisation later succeeded in pressuring a number of countries to begin adopting steps to reduce the use of single-use plastic. The European Union passed the plastic bag guidelines in 2015 with the intention of taking steps to reduce plastic bag consumption to 90 bags per person by 2018.
By 2025, the directive hopes to reduce this to 40 plastic bags per person.
The main goal of the day is to raise awareness of the growing harm that the use of this non-biodegradable substance is causing to the environment. It is concerning to learn that a plastic bag takes 1,000 years to disintegrate in a landfill, despite the fact that collective efforts over the past 10 years have drastically decreased the impact thus far.