In the last ten years we have produced more plastic than in the previous century. Plastic is a wonderful invention because it’s durable (lunch boxes), but that also makes it terrible invention (it takes 500 year before it perish). At this moment the world produces 500 billion of plastics every year. Every person consumes 136 kg per year. But a lot of it reach the ocean, approximately 8 billion kg of plastics each year reach the ocean. You can compare this with 4 big garbage trucks emptying their garbage in the season for every 5 minutes. At this moment we have around 6 trillion pieces of plastics in the ocean.
We became a throw-away-society. We like things that we can throw away, because it saves us time. We like convenience, we like fast, we like cheap – we like to throw away when something breaks, we don’t like to repair anymore. We think that when we throw something into the garbage it just magically disappears.
The first question we need to ask is: why is there garbage in the sea? How does plastic end up in the ocean? Is it a matter of people throwing their trash directly into the sea? Well, it is one of the ways trash ends up in the sea, but by far not the most impactful one. The main causes are 1) decades of poor waste management, especially in regards to plastics 2) Consumers 3) Illegal practices, for example from fisheries.
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May I simply say what a relief to uncover somebody that really understands what theyre discussing over the internet. You certainly know how to bring a problem to light and make it important. More and more people really need to check this out and understand this side of the story. I was surprised that youre not more popular because you certainly have the gift.