Marine Litter: Plunging Deep, Spreading Wide

plastic-pollution-beach-bali
Plastic pollution, Bali.
In 2008, our global plastic consumption worldwide has been estimated at 260 million tons, and, according to a 2012 report by Global Industry Analysts, plastic consumption is to reach 297.5 million tons by 2015. Plastic is versatile, lightweight, flexible, moisture resistant, strong, and relatively inexpensive. Those are the attractive qualities that lead us, around the world, to such a voracious appetite and over-consumption of plastic goods. However, durable and very slow to degrade, plastic materials that are used in the production of so many products all, ultimately, become waste with staying power. Our tremendous attraction to plastic, coupled with an undeniable behavioral propensity of increasingly over-consuming, discarding, littering and thus polluting, has become a combination of lethal nature… Captions and Photograph: © SAF — Coastal Care

Excerpts;

With an average of 13,000 pieces of plastic litter estimated to be afloat every single square kilometer of ocean globally, and 6.4 million tonnes of marine litter reaching the oceans every year according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), researchers and scientists predict a bleak future for the great bodies of water that are vital to our planet’s existence…

Read Full Article, IPS News

UN Meeting Hears Call For Greater Marine Protections As Plastic Waste Accrues In Oceans, UN News (10-06-2014)

When The Mermaids Cry: The Great Plastic Tide, Coastal Care

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