What Are We Doing To Our Planet?

Human reliance on plastic at current levels is unsustainable; the prospect that it could worsen and fast is horrific but likely, unless we do something about it now. As in now!

Non-profit Plastic Oceans has put out some deeply worrying facts on plastic pollution.

We all know about the problem, but that doesn’t mean we should hide from being reminded constantly of its true scale, so we make no apologies for doing so.

• We produce more than 380 million metric tons of plastic, each year, and that’s not slowing down. We produced more in the last decade than during the whole of the 20th century
• Up to 50 percent of is used once. It holds the thing we bought, and then it’s discarded, and much of it will stick around on earth for hundreds of years
• Over 10 million metric tons each year ends up in oceans
• All discarded plastic is a problem, but it’s probably bottles that you see more than anything else. One source said over 100 billion bottles were sold in 2014, just in the U.S. That’s 315 per person
• 57 percent of the bottles sold in the U.S. in 2014 were plastic water bottles, amounting to 57.3 billion, up from 3.8 billion in 1996 (that’s a 14-fold increase in 18 years)
• The U.S. accounts for less than 5 percent of the world’s population, and 2021 is likely to have seen even more bottles sold than in 2014, and 2022 will be higher still

Anyone out there still think it’s not a major problem?

[Image Credit: © Plastic Oceans]