This is one of the biggest pollution problems since plastic is made with toxic elements such as oxide and benzene. These chemicals affect both animals and their habitat. For example, it takes us 5 minutes to produce a plastic bag; their use in general is for 12 min, but it takes centuries to biodegrade, without disappearing completely because it shatters into tiny pieces.
Most end up in our oceans where it has a devastating effect on marine fauna and flora. Plastic bags are especially harmful to marine animals, and they are ones of the most common garbage items on California's beaches, according to the Los Angeles Times. "Millions of animals from more than 370 species around the world eat plastic" (El plastico mata, 2018); for example, all types of sea turtles eat plastic fragments.
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They also gobble up bags, which they mistake for jellyfish, one of their common preys. The effects are ulcerations, hemorrhages, intestinal occlusions, rectal prolapse, often resulting in an agonizing death. Beside the sea turtles, we also have whales and even fish at the base of the food chain on which we depend. "It is estimated that plastic kills 1 million seabirds and more than 100,000 marine mammals and turtles every year" (2018).