Difference between revisions of "Plastic Pollution Facts and Figures"

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  • The amount of plastic produced from 2000 - 2010 exceeds the amount produced during the entire last century.[1]
  • Plastic is the most common type of marine litter worldwide.[2]
  • An estimated 100,000 marine mammals and 1 million sea birds die every year after ingesting or being tangled in plastics.[3]
  • Up to 80% of the plastic in our oceans comes from land-based sources.[4]
  • Plastics comprise up to 90% of floating marine debris.[5]
  • Approximately 100 billion plastic bags are used in the United States each year.[6]
  • In 2009 about 3.8 million tons of waste plastic "bags, sacks and wraps" were generated, but only 9.4% of this total was recycled.[7]
  • Plastics do not biodegrade, but instead break down into small particles that persist in the ocean, absorb the toxins, and enter our food chain through fish, sea birds and other marine life.[8]
  • Plastic bags are problematic in the litter stream because they float easily in the air and water, traveling long distances and never fully breaking down in water.


Footnotes

  1. Thompson, RC. “Plastics, the environment and human health: current consensus and future trends” (364): 1526, pp. 2153 – 2166 in: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences (2009).
  2. J.G.B. Derraik, “The pollution of the marine environment by plastic debris: a review” Marine Pollution Bulletin 44 (2002): 843; Gregory, M.R., Ryan, P.G. “Pelagic plastics and other seaborne persistent synthetic debris: a review of Southern Hemisphere perspectives” in Coe, J.M. Rogers, D.B. (Eds.), Marine Debris – Sources, Impacts and Solutions, (1997) Springer-Verlag, New York, pp. 4 9-66.
  3. United Nations Environment Programme, “Marine Litter: Trash that Kills,” found at http://www.unep.org/regionalseas/marinelitter/publications/docs/trash_that_kills.pdf at p. 10. See also, N. Wallace. “Debris entanglement in the marine environment: A Review” (985) pp. 259-277 in: R.S. Shomura and H.O. Yoshida (eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on the Fate and Impact of Marine Debris, U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA Technical Memorandum. NMFS, NOAA-TM-NMFS-SWFC-5.
  4. California Ocean Protection Council, “An Implementation Strategy for the California Ocean Protection Councill Resolution to Reduce and Prevent Ocean Litter,” (November 20, 2008) at p.3; see also http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/08/03/ships-set-sail-to-examine-the-vast-patch-of-plastic-in-thepacific- ocean/ http://www.cleanupday.org/education.htm
  5. http://www.unep.org/regionalseas/marinelitter/publications/docs/anl_oview.pdf
  6. Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, Elizabeth Royte, Little, Brown and Company, 2005 http://www.amazon.com/Garbage-Land-Secret-Trail-Trash/dp/0316738263
  7. http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/municipal/pubs/msw2009rpt.pdf http://www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/municipal/msw99.htm
  8. Williams, Caroline. Battle of the Bag, New Scientist, September 11, 2004