We are literally, as a species, starting to choke on our plastic consumption. Plastic is used in food wrapping, baby bottles, beverage containers, food containers, plastic bags, children’s toys, appliances, computers, cars, in furniture and clothing. In fact, if you look around any North American home, chances are it is overflowing with plastic.
As a planet we are consuming more than 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags per year. Most of those end up in the waterways and landfills —100 million plastic bags go into local landfills each week. Biologists estimate more than 100,000 marine animals and birds die each year from ingesting plastic bags or getting caught up in plastic and drowning.
1.5 million tons of plastic are used every year by the bottled water industry.
There is a plastic mass larger than the State of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean. The San Diego Coastkeeper, an American non-profit, explains that, “…plastics in the ocean outweigh natural zooplankton by a 6:1 ratio. This means marine life is now consuming more plastic than zooplankton”.
Bottled water remains the fastest selling beverage in the USA, even though much of the country’s tap water is potable. Globally in 2004, more than 154 billion liters of bottled water were consumed. Friends of the Earth UK reports 1.5 million tons of plastic are used every year by the bottled water industry.
In 2005, producing water bottles for American consumption required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil; not including the energy for transportation reported The Journal Queen’s University. In California more than 3 million empty water bottles are thrown away daily.
These figures and facts only represent 3 types of plastic problems — plastic bags, water bottles and Plastic Island. Wasteonline reports the world's annual consumption of plastic materials has increased from around 5 million tons in the 1950s to nearly 100 million tons today. The majority of the plastic we consume ends up in the landfills or waterways where it slowly breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces over a 200-400 year time period.
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