Humans produce 500 billion plastic bags annually.

In China, they recently banned it. Australia, Bangladesh, Ireland, Italy, South Africa,Taiwan, Mumbai and India have either banned it or discouraged its use by raising taxes. And on March 27, 2007, San Francisco became the first city in the USA to ban it from large grocery stores.

More people are ditching plastic bags on a local and national level with good reason: we produce about 500 billion plastic bags world-wide, and less than one percent of that is recycled.

A recent QUEST report shows that plastic bottles are straining our environment, too: each year the USA alone produces 50 billion plastic bottles. Some would say to switch from plastic to paper bags - but reports show that paper bags aren’t the most sustainable solution.

Plastic can have a longer shelf-live than humans do: it can persist in the environment for anywhere between 20 to 1,000 years. But a 16-year-old from Waterloo, Canada figured out to decompose it in only six weeks.

Daniel Burd, a student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute, discovered the key to decomposing plastic bags for a school science fair. Needless to say, he won.

“Almost every week I have to do chores and when I open the closet door, I have this avalanche of plastic bags falling on top of me,” said Burd to The Record, a Waterloo newspaper. “One day, I got tired of it and wanted to know what other people are doing with these plastic bags.”

First, Burd decided to isolate the microbes that break down plastic in polyethelene plastic bags. Burd ground plastic bags into powder and created a solution to break it down using tap water and yeast. Six weeks later, he found that the plastic weighed 17 percent less than the control group.

Burd then isolated the effective strains that caused the degradation - Sphingomonas and Pseudomonas - and tried the experiment again, adding sodium acecate.

Six weeks later - as opposed to 1,000 years - the plastic decomposed by 43 percent.

For his final report, Plastic Not Fantastic, Burd wrote that his process of polyethylene degradation can be used for large-scale plastic bag biodegradation.

“As a result, this would save the lives of millions of wildlife species and save space in landfills,” wrote Burd.

And how this metamorphosis saves Monkeys!

Colombia: a beautiful country, with incredible forests and diverse wildlife, but like many other countries, a trash problem. With no formal trash collection system, the forests and villages suffer from scattered plastic bags, endangering wildlife and creating a mess on village streets. One such village was Los Limites, until they came up with a most transformative solution: Eco-Mochilas!

The Eco-Mochila project was invented by the organization Proyecto Titi (Project Tamarin), a dynamic conservation program that combines field research, education, and community programs in an effort to protect the endangered Cotton Top Tamarin.

An Eco-Mochila is a bag made from crocheting 100 plastic bags into a colorful beach bag or purse. The innovative woman who create the bags are called the Asoartesanas. They encourage villagers and school children to collect plastic bags and as they go door to door to collect, they educate the people about their local wildlife. Then, they cut the bags into strips and begin their craft.

Eco-Mochilas are sold throughout the world at various venues and bring in a suitable salary for an artist. Of course, the collecting of thousands of plastic bags has other benefits: a more beautiful village, and a forest clear of trash, which makes a certain one-pound monkey very happy.

The endangered Cotton Top Tamarin is found only in the forests of Colombia. Deforestation and capture for the pet trade are the species’ greatest threats. The Eco-Mochila project creates sustenance for villagers, an alternative to using the forest for such, and of course, offers a cleaner forest for all wildlife.

The program has been so successful that the Asoartesanas have trained people from other countries to begin similar project in their communities…

And in case this is important to their case, eco-mochilas are cute, come in different sizes, can be personalized, make great presents and are water resistant. I have three!

Click here to purchase an Eco-Mochila and help Cotton-Top Tamarins; and come visit the Tamarins at the Oakland Zoo anytime.