Plastic waste soils the seas

Imagine a beach. Measure one metre. Place on the sand 15 shopping bags full of plastic. Then do the same for every other metre of coastline around the world. That’s how much waste plastic finds its way into the sea … every year.

An appalling 8 million tonnes a year. And the amount is growing.

A new US-Australian study assembled data from 192 countries and found that China was responsible for 28% of the total, followed by Indonesia on 10%. All the other main offenders were middle and low income countries, many from Asia, with the United States ranked 20th.

Plastic is a re-usable resource from a non-renewable resource. Surely we must treat it better ?