OCEAN PLASTIC STATISTICS:
- More than 1 million seabirds and 100,000 marine animals die from plastic pollution every year.
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100% of baby sea turtles have plastic in their stomachs.
- There is now 5.25 trillion macro and micro pieces of plastic in our ocean & 46,000 pieces in every square mile of ocean, weighing up to 269,000 tonnes.
- Every day around 8 million pieces of plastic makes their way into our oceans.
- The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is around 1.6 million square kilometers – bigger than Texas.
- The world produces 381 million tonnes in plastic waste yearly – this is set to double by 2034.
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50% of this is single-use plastic & only 9% has ever been recycled.
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Over 2 million tonnes of plastic packaging are used in the UK each year.
- 88% of the sea's surface is polluted by plastic waste.
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Between 8 to 14 million tonnes enters our ocean every year.
- Britain contributes an estimated 1.7 million tonnes of plastic annually.
- The US contributes 38 million tonnes of plastic every year.
- Plastic packaging is the biggest culprit, resulting in 80 million tonnes of waste yearly from the US alone.
- On UK beaches there are 5000 pieces of plastic & 150 plastic bottles for each mile.
- More than 1 million plastic bags end up in the trash every minute.
- The world uses over 500 billion plastic bags a year – that’s 150 for each person on Earth.
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8.3 billion plastic straws pollute the world’s beaches, but only 1% of straws end up as waste in the ocean.
- By 2020 the number of plastics in the sea will be higher than the number of fish.
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1 in 3 fish caught for human consumption contains plastic.
- Plastic microbeads are estimated to be one million times more toxic than the seawater around it.
- Products containing microbeads can release 100,000 tiny beads with just one squeeze.
