The Facts about Dumping of Plastics in Oceans - By JerryMC Alfred

By JerryMC Alfred 

The proliferation of plastic products in the last several decades has been extraordinary. Quite simply, humans are addicted to this nearly indestructible material. According to the organization called  Plastic Ocean, We are producing over 300 million tons of plastic every year, 50% of which is for single-use purposes – utilized for just a few moments, but on the planet for at least several hundred years. 

More than 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into our oceans every year.

Plastics and their byproducts are littering our cities, oceans, and waterways, and contributing to health problems in humans and animals. 

Plastic is cheap and incredibly versatile with properties that make it ideal for many applications. However, these qualities have also resulted in it becoming an environmental issue. We have developed a “disposable” lifestyle and estimates are that around 50% of plastic is used just once and thrown away.

Plastic is a valuable resource in many ways, but plastic pollution is an unnecessary and unsustainable waste of that resource.

1. Packaging is the largest end-use market segment accounting for just over 40% of total plastic usage.

    

2. Annually approximately 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide. More than one million bags are used every minute.

    

3. A plastic bag has an average “working life” of 15 minutes.

    

4. Over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century.

How about Beverage Bottles Alone?

1. According to the Container Recycling Institute, 100.7 billion plastic beverage bottles were sold in the U.S. in 2014, or 315 bottles per person. 

2. 57% of those units were plastic water bottles: 57.3 billion sold in 2014. This is up from 3.8 billion plastic water bottles sold in 1996, the earliest year for available data.

    

3. The process of producing bottled water requires around 6 times as much water per bottle as there is in the container.

    

4. 14% of all litter comes from beverage containers. When caps and labels are considered, the number is higher.

It will be of note that Lagosians alone, dump about 450,000 metric tonnes of Plastic Wastes Into Ocean Bodies Annually. Thats about 450Million bottles. Just imagine the consumption of other states.

Still to this page and we will see on subsequent posts on what we can convert these plastics to.