Be Helpful, Not Hurtful
More Plastic Than Plankton
WARNING! DANGER! Whatever it takes to get your attention! Just recently 5 of these masses of more plastic than plankton have been found in our oceans! Water is the source of all life on this planet! Our oceans supply most of our rainfall as well! If any of these toxins find its way into our rain, everything on land will be poisoned by the very source we rely on to sustain life!
A mass of plastic in the Pacific, increasing tenfold each decade since 1945, is now the size of Texas & killing everything in its wake. Currently, there is six times more plastic than plankton floating in the middle of the Pacific.
Each day, North Americans throw away more than 385,000 cell phones and 143,000 computers-electronic waste is now the fastest-growing stream of garbage. Lead and mercury are seeping from this waste into ground water. Some of the e-waste, however, is winding up in the sea.
Each hour, North Americans consume and discard about 2.75 million plastic water and soda bottles; that's 24 billion a year.
Globally, 100 million tons of plastic are generated each year and at least 10% of that is finding its way into the sea.
Worldwide, each year 113 billion kilograms of small plastic pellets called nurdles--the feedstock for all disposable plastics-- are shipped and billions are spilled during transfer in and out of railroad cars. Those spilled nurdles are ending up in gutters and drains and eventually carried into the ocean. Nurdles resemble fish eggs or roe. Tuna and salmon feed on them indiscriminately. Around 2.5 billion humans eat fish regularly. Plastic and other man-made toxins are polluting the global food chain and it's rising at an unprecedented rate.
Each year, a million sea birds and 100,000 sharks, turtles, dolphins and whales die from eating plastic.
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