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Plastic bags are the modern environmental terror — piling up in landfills , polluting the oceansand choking wildlife . Now , Hawaii has taken a stand by becoming the first U.S. state to ban plastic bags at check-out procedure counter .

Hawaii has always valued the ground , or " Aina , " so the stair is n’t too surprising . Four of the Department of State ’s five counties have passed fictile traveling bag bans ( Hawaii ’s Kalawao County , the only outlier , is hardly populate ) , theHuffington Postreported . " Being a marine res publica , perhaps , we are exposed more directly to the impacts of moldable pollution and the damage it does to our surround , " Robert Harris , director of the Sierra Club ’s Hawaii chapter , enounce in 2012 , fit in to the Huffington Post .

In Brief

Pollution is a threat to marine life. As filter feeders, whale sharks are prone to gobble up plastic during their feeding sweeps.

customer can bring their own reclaimable bag to local shops and restaurants , or habituate theme base . Shops will still cater plastic bags for bulk item such as meat , grains or fresh green groceries . The island of Maui , Kauai and the Big Island have already banned plastic bags , and Oahu will ban them start July 2015 . Stores and restaurants on the Big Island had been charging customer for plastic bags for a year .

While no other U.S. states have shun the omnipresent bag , several metropolis have . Los Angelesbanned them at the get-go of 2014 , and San Francisco and Santa Monica have BAN as well . Portland , Ore. , and Washington , D.C. , have bans too . Coastal North Carolina enacted a ban , but suspended it indefinitely when a tornado run into a composition dish distribution essence in 2011 . Plastic travelling bag prohibition also exist in some cities in England , Mexico , India , Myanmar , Bangladesh , Rwanda and Australia , according toHowStuffWorks . Others , admit Italy , Belgium , Ireland , Switzerland and Germany , assess the bag or charge a fee for them . Taiwan banned them for three age before abstract the ban in 2006 .

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Pollution is a threat to marine life. As filter feeders, whale sharks are prone to gobble up plastic during their feeding sweeps.

Plastic waste by the ocean

a close-up of a material with microplastics embedded in it

Pseudomonas aeruginosa as seen underneath a microscope.

A poignant scene of a recently burned forest, captured at sunset.

Iceberg A23a drifting in the southern ocean having broken free from the Larsen Ice Shelf.

a cat licking a plastic bag

a landscape photo of an outcrop of Greenland�s Isua supracrustal belt, shows valley with a pool of water in the center and a coastline and ocean beyond

Petermann is one of Greenland�s largest glaciers, lodged in a fjord that, from the height of its mountain walls down to the lowest point of the seafloor, is deeper than the Grand Canyon.

A researcher stands inside the crystal-filled cave known as the Pulpí Geode — the largest geode on Earth.

A polar bear in the Arctic.

A golden sun sets over the East China Sea, near Okinawa, Japan.

Vescovo (left) recently completed the Five Deeps Expedition with his latest dive into the deepest part of the Arctic Ocean.

An image comparing the relative sizes of our solar system�s known dwarf planets, including the newly discovered 2017 OF201

a view of a tomb with scaffolding on it

an illustration showing a large disk of material around a star

A small phallic stalagmite is encircled by a 500-year-old bracelet carved from shell with Maya-like imagery

a person holds a GLP-1 injector

A man with light skin and dark hair and beard leans back in a wooden boat, rowing with oars into the sea

A photo of Donald Trump in front of a poster for his Golden Dome plan