Plastic is everywhere!
Our planet has an estimate of over 5.25 billion tons of ocean plastic.
There are over 300 million tons of plastic produced worldwide each year.
We are heavily reliant on plastic products.
Here are some facts about plastic pollution that show just how big of a problem we, as a society, are dealing with.
Read More: How To Stop Plastic Pollution In The Ocean
1. HOW MANY PLASTIC BAGS ARE MADE EVERY YEAR?
There are now more than five trillion single-use plastic bags being produced worldwide each year; that's around one million tons of plastic waste.
That’s a lot of trips to the grocery store.
2. HOW MUCH PLASTIC IS CREATED ANNUALLY?
In 1950, only 2 million tons of plastic per year was produced in the world.
By 2015, that ballooned to over 381 million tons, AND continues to increase every single year.
Unless current trends change, by 2050, the world will create more plastic than fish globally.
3. WHERE DOES PLASTIC POLLUTION COME FROM?
Plastic pollution comes from many sources including: product manufacturing, shipping and transportation, consumer use and disposal.
80% of the plastic in the world's ocean enter from our rivers and coastlines.
To face plastic pollution head-on, we need to stop it before it gets to the ocean, at the source!
4. HOW MUCH PLASTIC IS NOT RECYCLED?
As much talk as there is about recycling, especially plastic, how much plastic is really recycled?
Only 8.7% of plastic was recycled in 2018. Over 91% of all plastic that was produced was not recycled! Most of the recycled 8.7% came from plastic water bottles.
Most plastics make their way to landfills where they take hundreds of years to degrade.
5. HOW MUCH PLASTIC IS IN THE OCEAN?
8 million metric tons of plastics enter the oceans every year.
Add that to the estimated 150 million metric tons that currently reside there right now. Staggering numbers, indeed.
Plastics are piling up in landfills and oceans faster than we recycle them.
And the problem is compounding annually.
6. HOW MUCH MICROPLASTIC DOES THE AVERAGE PERSON EAT?
There are many types of plastics that are harmful to humans.
A big one is microplastics.
Microplastics are extremely small pieces of plastic that are 5mm in size or less. They can be found virtually everywhere.
We eat and breath these plastic particles every week!
A study estimates that humans eat over 35000 particles of plastic annually, and those estimates increase to over 70000 particles when we add in our innate ability to breath.
Additionally:
This study suggests that when a person gets their water mainly from bottles, that could increase to over 90000 particles a year.
7. HOW MUCH IS 10 LBS OF PLASTIC?
Sometimes different units of measurement can be hard to really visualize.
Visualizing the weight of something can be especially hard because a pound of steel looks a lot different than a pound of feathers.
The same is true of plastic.
It’s such a lightweight material, that it’s hard to visualize what one pound of plastic would actually look like.
It takes about 47 empty half-liter water bottles to make a pound of plastic, and 8 empty gallon milk jugs to make a pound of plastic.
This means that ten pounds of plastic can be made up of 470 water bottles or 80 milk jugs!