We, as a species, create a lot of garbage: 2.6 trillion pounds of crap is thrown out by the human race every year, and it all has to go somewhere. And a lot of that somewhere, it turns out, is the ocean — so much so that plastic will become more prevalent than fish in just a few decades.
This is by weight, mind you. Currently, we dump about a garbage truck’s worth of plastic into the ocean every minute, and it’s a huge environmental problem already. There’s already a giant whirlpool of plastic crap in the Pacific that needs to get cleaned up, and you can guess what dumping even more crap into the ocean will do to that problem. If that weren’t enough, we’ll also be chewing up 20% of the world’s oil production with shampoo bottles.
The good news is that at least people are now fully aware of the problem, and this isn’t a case where the plastics industry wants to keep pumping oil. The same report has a plan to, essentially, recycle more plastic and make plastic out of cheaper, more environmentally-friendly materials. This would save everybody a lot of money — an estimated at $12 billion a year — and would also leave adorable sea animals alive, which is a nice bonus.
Meanwhile, if you want to save the sea animals, try to cut down on the plastic you buy and accept. Yeah, hauling tote bags everywhere can be annoying, but the dolphins will thank you for it.
(Via The Huffington Post)
