It's estimated that tens of thousands of seabirds choke on plastic and 143 species are known to have become entangled in plastic.  There's about 100 million tonnes of plastic in the sea and around 80% of the litter in the sea comes from the land.  Not to mention the nasty stuff that's in plastic - substances that are known human carcinogens and hormone disruptors.  Scientists also reckon it will take around 1000 years for plastic to degrade sufficiently. (ASMFC, UNEP, Greenpeace, WHO, Algalita)

There are around 10,000 households in the Chandler's Ford area.  If each household used an average of 6 new plastic shopping bags a week and you laid them all out in a row, a year's waste would stretch from Chandler's Ford to Milan.