Plastics are everywhere. Made from fossil fuels, consuming energy only to be thrown away, piling up in landfills, clogging our oceans, and contaminating food chains — they somehow sum up everything that’s wrong with how we treat our planet.
Plastic doesn’t biodegrade — it sticks around forever.
So it’s no surprise so much of the stuff is polluting the environment.
Yet the statistics are shocking: We produce close to 300 million tons of plastic waste each year, and an estimated 8 million tons of that ends up in the sea.
Some collect together to form “trash islands,” including the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — recently estimated to be three times the size of France.
The European Union plans to make all plastics recyclable by 2030; and in other parts of the world, plastic bags, for example, have been outlawed for years.