What do hand cream, coca cola, raisins and iPods have in common? When we buy them, they are wrapped in something that is designed to throw away, but made to last forever: plastic.
Try to imagine how many plastic bags and bottles you’ve thrown away last week, month, year, decade, … life! Now take into account the other 6 billion careless idiots walking around.
The consumer is not the only one to blame. Many multinationals don’t give a flying f*** either and toss tons of plastic into the water. Some countries are unashamed experts (hint: they eat rice with curry and pronounce it as lice with cully).
Scientists previously believed plastic to be indestructible. A new study suggests that some plastics actually decompose rapidly. The salty ocean water turns a plastic Sprite bottle into thousands of tiny plastic pieces within a year.
You don’t have to be an academicus emeritus to understand what’s happening next. Fish eat it, and humans eat the fish. Which means the toxic shit we throw away, ends up in our bodies and causes cancer. And then we die. Karma is a bitch.
Plastic pollution is a huge problem. Huge, as in twice the size of the US. Yes, that is the size of the mountain of plastic garbage floating in the North Pacific. And this big fellow has 4 brothers and sisters floating elsewhere.
So … What can you do solve the problem? You can’t solve it on your own. But you can try to contribute to the solution. Here’s how:
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