After being mainly ignored during the election period, climate change will again be under the spotlight as the Doha Climate Change Conference, hosted by the UN, will be taking place from November 26 to December 7th.

The conference is meant to progress international goals on climate change. However, environmental issues can be addressed domestically and locally too; the use of plastic bags is a place to start.

Every year, the US uses 280 billions plastic bags, enough to stretch around Earth 29,000 times.

In the Pacific Ocean, there is currently a plastic island twice the size of the continental US.

The billions plastic bags tossed away by Americans every year is equivalent to 12 million oil barrels dumped into the environment.

The following infographic, created by Learnstuff, provides a detailed overview of the environmental scourge of plastic bags as, well as successful initiatives that have been taken to fight it.