China uses roughly three billion plastic bags every day. To create this many bags, China must refine 37 million barrels of crude oil every year

Wow! That is a LOT of plastic bags!! Every day! .

Good news.....they have to start doing something about the incredible pollution. I lived there for a time and I had never before experienced what it was like to choke on air.....yuck.
Ireland banned the bags too and I think its amazing how quickly people adapted. Now it would feel kinda dumb not to use one of the many bags I already have to shop....
It's a good first move, even if the motivation isn't pure, hehe.

You can find many of them floating north of Hawaii.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/10/26/notes102607.DTL&hw=morford&sn=017&sc=714

Have you heard? Did you see? It's called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (or Pacific Trash Vortex, among other awesome nicknames) and it's a staggering phenomenon indeed and after reading up on it, I fully believe we must now revise our master list. Because surely this thing must be one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, the grand sociocultural melting pot of our time. Except for the fact that it's, you know, revolting.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
This is another example of a Gaia response, we endanger the environment, Nature turns it around so that we endanger ourselves, in the end Nature wins, we lose!