How extreme is the plastic pollution issue?
While plastic is an important part of our daily lives, a recent study found six times more plastic than plankton in the ocean off the California coast. A United Nations Environment Program report entitled: Marine Litter: Trash that Kills, estimates that more than 5.76 million tons of plastic will end up in our oceans in 2006. To put that number in perspective, thats enough to cover 2/3rds of California with plastic. And, at the current plastic usage acceleration rate of 5% per year (according to The Resin Review, published by the American Plastics Council), we could cover the entire state of California in plastic by the end of next year, the entire U.S. by 2014, and every landmass on earth by the year 2042! That amounts to 573 million square miles of plastic trash in the oceans in just 37 years. Is “extreme” an adequate enough word? Recycling is more commonplace than ever, but only 3.5% of plastic is actually recycled. The rest may take centuries to decompose. One of the goals of Calif
