Why do we think you should care? There are millions reasons, each representing some of the 30+ million tonnes of plastics thrown away each year in the US alone.
1.Plastic is overtaking our landscapes & oceans. 8 million tonnes of it enters the oceans each year now contributing to over 1 million deaths of marine animals due to plastic ingestion, strangulation or starvation. Over 300,000 animals die each year from entanglement from the millions of tonnes of fishing line and net that is lost each year.
2.Plastic trash spreads harmful chemicals to people and the planet. BPAs ( bisphenol A. is an industrial chemical that has been used to make certain plastics and resins since the 1960s), Styrenes (used in chemical production to make latex, synthetic rubber, and other polystyrene resins – Styrofoam), Antimony (a chemical element with the symbol Sb. Certain compounds of antimony appear to be toxic), and Mercury are just some of the harmful chemicals which are leaked into the seas when plastics breakdown.
3.Fish are eating plastic, we eat fish! Plastic particles are showing up in the stomachs of fish worldwide (1). As fish are progressively eaten by larger fish, the concentration of chemicals from plastics increases.
4.Plastic is made from oil, a limited resource! Over 1.25 BILLION barrels of oil are used per year to make plastics. 55% of this is single use plastic and over 75% of these plastics are sent directly to landfills or fall into streams, rivers, seas or oceans.
5.Plastic is clogging up our waste stream. Of the over 250 million tonnes of Municipal Solid Waste produced in the USA as of 2015, 30+ million tonnes of this was plastics. Of that, less than 3 million tonnes were recycled. This is leaving hundreds of millions of tonnes of plastic waste which will leach toxic chemicals for centuries.
Antilles Plastic Project, Inc. 