How Bad Is the Ocean Plastic Crisis

The plastic problem is mind-bogglingly big, and it is only getting bigger. It is tough to get people to care. Below is a collection of facts that will blow your mind. Hopefully, you care enough to help those of us that are doing something about it. The single action of individual people can collectively provide the power to fix the problem one step at a time.  

The world produces approximately 381 million tonnes of plastic waste yearly. About 79% is sent to landfills, 12% gets burnt, only 9% is recycled. A significant amount ends up in the Ocean. 

Every day around 8 million additional pieces of plastic enter our oceans, that is about one garbage truck of plastic every minute. Imagine someone turning up to your house every minute to unload a Garbage Truck full of waste plastic. 

Two-thirds of Ocean plastic pollution comes from litter being washed down rivers and drains, left on beaches, or blowing away from dumpsites. 

It is estimated that now 25 trillion macro and 51 trillion individual microplastic pieces litter our oceans, which is about 500 times the number of stars in our galaxy. To look at it on a smaller scale, there are now 46,000 pieces of macro and microplastic in every square mile of the ocean.

100% of baby sea turtles are found to have plastic in their stomachs.

More than two-thirds of the world’s fish stocks are suffering from plastic ingestion.

Microplastic has now been found in many human food sources including tap water, beer, and salt. We now know that humans do ingest microplastics, as evidenced by the finding that they were widely found in fecal samples from people all over the world.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is officially bigger than Texas or 4 times the size of France.

It is estimated that the number of plastics in the sea is getting close to the total number of fish.