Plastic waste and plastic pollution have dominated the headlines since the late 1990s, primarily because plastic takes hundreds of years to degrade and can remain chemically toxic during this time.
In particular, marine life is especially vulnerable to this toxic plastic attack because we dump millions of tonnes of plastic waste into the oceans each year.
This is done either deliberately or accidentally, and the best estimates suggest that approximately 80% of ocean-going plastics originate from land-based sources.
Only the remaining 20 percent are from marine sources.
These sources include private shipping, both large and small, and fishing fleets leaving behind fishing nets, lines, ropes, and buoys.
Some plastic pollution even comes from abandoned vessels dumped into the sea to avoid the huge scrappage costs.
In fact, a Greenpeace report (Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans, 2006) stated that the world produces 260 million tonnes of plastic per year, and around 10% of this ends up in the oceans.
This plastic then breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces due to environmental effects and is ingested by marine life.
It is estimated that 100,000 ocean-going mammals and 1 million seabirds die from plastic ingestion each year.
Shockingly, due to the long lifespan of plastic, any marine life that dies from plastic ingestion might not be the only victim. Plastic, dependant upon climatic conditions, can survive for hundreds of years. Thus, it will find new victims and continue to do so long after the previous victim has rotted away.
However, Even though we know all this, plastic production has not slowed down.
In 2015 it was estimated that global plastic pollution was approximately 380 million tonnes. And by 2015, the world had produced 7.8 billion tonnes of plastic.