Think twice before you buy a bottle
10 Shocking facts about plastic
taken from the national geographic’s plastic facts:
01 – More than 5 trillion pieces of plastic are already floating in our oceans.
02 – Worldwide, 73 percent of beach litter is plastic: filters from cigarette butts, bottles, bottle caps, food wrappers, grocery bags, and polystyrene containers.
03 – World plastic production has increased exponentially from 2.3 million tons in 1950 to 162 million in 1993 to 448 million by 2015.
04 – By 2050, virtually every seabird species on the planet will be eating plastic.
05 – As of 2015, more than 6.9 billion tons of plastic waste had been generated. Around 9 percent of that was recycled, 12 percent was incinerated, and 79 percent accumulated in landfills or environment.
06 – Around the world, nearly a million plastic beverage bottles are sold every minute.
07 – Estimates for how long plastic endures range from 450 years to forever.
08 – The largest market for plastics today is packaging materials. That trash now accounts for nearly half of all plastic waste generated globally—most of it never gets recycled or incinerated.
09 – Some 700 species of marine animals have been reported so far to have eaten or become entangled in plastic.
10 – More than 40 percent of plastic is used just once, then tossed.
Adam