There are 21,000 pieces of plastic in the ocean for each person on Earth – the Washington Post

Microplastics in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed (by Chesapeake Bay Program CC BY-NC 2.0 via Flickr).

And plastic pollution has been doubling every six years.

Humans have filled the world’s oceans with more than 170 trillion pieces of plastic, dramatically more than previously estimated, according to a major study released Wednesday.

The trillions of plastic particles — a “plastic smog,” in the words of the researchers — weigh roughly 2.4 million metric tons and are doubling about every six years…