(Washington, DC) -- An estimated 90 billion plastic grocery bags a year go unrecycled and that has to stop.

So says Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.

Steiner says plastic bags are the second most common form of litter worldwide, just behind cigarette butts.

He wants single use plastic bags "banned or phased out rapidly everywhere." Steiner claims, quote, "there is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere." The declaration, issued Monday, was released in tandem with an Environment Program report showing plastic is the most prevalent type of marine debris on the planet.

Plastic bags, according to the report, are hazardous to all marine life because they degrade into smaller and smaller pieces that can be consumed by the smallest creatures in the food chain.

In the U.S., only San Francisco has totally banned plastic bags.

Los Angeles will follow suit next year.

In Washington, D.C., the city council is scheduled to vote soon on a five-cent-per bag tax which, it's hoped, will discourage the use of plastic sacks.

The bag industry has a program underway to boost the amount of recycled content in each plastic bag to 40-percent by 2015.

(Copyright 2009 by Newsroom Solutions)