Facts about single use plastic
What was seen as such an adaptable, amazing innovation all these years ago is now so pervasive and difficult to eradicate that it’s entered our diet, it’s in our water, and it’s even been found in the deepest reaches of the ocean.
And if that’s not enough to make you think twice about single use plastic, consider this.
You will ingest 202 pieces of microplastic today, tomorrow, and forever.
And we have no idea what that’s going to do to our bodies in the long term.
8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced since the 1950s, using roughly 8% of the world’s oil to make it. Almost 50% of all the plastic in existence was created after the year 2000, and only 9% has ever been recycled.
So the levels of plastic in your body right now, is unprecedented.
Given the years of testing a pharmaceutical company has to go through to get a lifesaving drug into circulation, it’s astounding that nobody seems to bother about the effects of having these pollutants in our bodies.
Most plastics never breakdown completely
Most plastics take up to 1,000 years to break down, and even then, they’ll never dissipate completely. The majority of plastics end up in the sea, and photo-degrade into microplastics that absorb toxins, continuing to pollute the environment - and your body too.
500 billion single-use plastic bags are used every year, with Australia using 6.9 billion of them. It was really only a matter of time before we felt the consequences.
Plastic kills one million sea birds a year
And 100,000 marine mammals every year too. 73% of all beach litter worldwide is plastic, and there’s a mass of floating plastic rubbish off the coast of California that’s almost the size of the Northern Territory. Items of plastic out number sea life by six to one, in this disgusting legacy we seem to be leaving to our children.
