You might not think twice before you choose "plastic" in line at the grocery store, but that will change quickly for residents of countries in the European Union.

A new "historic" deal passed by the European Union (EU) calls for all of its member states to ban, or implement measures to reduce the consumption of, plastic bags,enough to cut plastic bag usage by 80 percent in a decade, Reuters reports.

The entire deal was made in an attempt to lessen the blow plastic bags have on the environment. As Grist notes, humans use more than a million plastic bags every minute. Those bags invariably end up oceans and other environmentally sensitive areas, where they can cause serious damage, and even death, to wildlife, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

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Currently, the average person in the EU uses 191 plastic bags a year. Under the new plan, countries in the EU will need to either ban plastic bags altogether, implement a price for plastic bags by 2019, or adopt other measures to reduce the average number of plastic bags used per person to 90 by 2019 and 40 by 2025, The Guardian notes.

Current forecasts project that the number of plastic bags used in the EU every year will rise from 4.5 billion to 5.1 billion by 2020, but this new rule would drastically change all of that.

It's important to note that plastic bag consumption across the E.U. isn't as uniform as those numbers seem to suggest. Danes, for instance, only use four plastic bags per person a year on average, while citizens of countries like Poland use more than 100 times that, according to Reuters.

That countries like Poland and Portugal, that need to implement drastic measures to reduce consumption by the deadlines agreed to a deal with countries like Denmark, that essentially need to do nothing, makes the deal all the more impressive, especially considering the consequences.

Member states that don't reduce plastic bag consumption by the set dates could face a court date with the EU, and in turn, some nasty fines.

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A man scavenges through a polluted river in Jakarta. (BAY ISMOYO/AFP/Getty Images)