Ever-Growing Plastic World

Ever since the invention of plastic the world and its people have moved to a more "artificial mode" of behavior.  It's harder to find real people nowadays. And just as humans have become more plastic, so has the planet as a whole. Statistics show that the use of plastic has increased 20 fold in the past half century and that production is expected to double again in the next 20 years. Amazingly,  nearly a third of all plastic packaging "escapes collection systems." No wonder I keep stepping on those plastic water bottles people toss on the sidewalk.

As for where the rest of the plastic goes, more than 8 million tons of plastics end up entering our oceans each year, where the pieces can survive for hundreds of years. There are believed to be 165 million tons of it in the ocean right now. We're dumping the equivalent of one garbage truck's worth into the ocean per minute. And that's projected to jump to four per minute by 2050, This is all according to a report released by the World Economic Forum and Ellen MacArthur Foundation. The report also gave a warning: By 2050 the world is on track to have more plastic, by weight, than all the fish in the world's oceans.

What doesn't end up in the ocean is likely be put in a landfills. So those two places, the oceans and landfills those two resting places contain about 70% of our plastic. Despite all the bins that I have at home, the ones I use to separate the plastic from the other trash, just 5% of plastics are effectively recycled. It makes one wonder why we have so much one time use plastic packaging, the goofy snap plastic containers that venders give us. Re usable packaging, even old fashioned wood products might work better. More recycling, reusable packaging, and compost able plastic packaging, to me sounds more real than plastic.