According to the same report by National Geographic, in 2018, shoppers in the United States used almost one plastic bag per resident per day, whereas shoppers in Denmark used an average of four plastic bags a year. Whereas according to the UN, plastic bags are now produced at a rate of one trillion a year! Therefore, many countries are now banning plastic bags, with Bangladesh being the first one having banned them back in 2002. Since then, more than two dozen countries have followed suit. However, one of the biggest problems is that the majority of plastic bags are not recycled and end up in landfills, where they take up to 1,000 years to degrade.