GREEN OCEAN FACTS ON PLASTIC POLLUTION

A plastic milk jug takes 1 million years to decompose.

• A plastic cup can take 50 - 80 years to decompose.
• Recycled plastic can be used to make things like trash cans, park benches, playground equipment, decks, and kayaks.
• Special fleece-like fabrics used in clothes and blankets can be made out of recycled plastic bottles.
• Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every HOUR.
• Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1 million sea creatures every year.
• Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
• A United States law, implementing an international agreement called MARPOL Annex V, became effective on December 31, 1988. It prohibits the disposal of plastics into the marine environment and requires ports to provide reception facilities for ship-generated plastic waste.
• Today, Americans generate 10.5 million tons of plastic waste a year but recycle only 1 or 2 % of it.
• An estimated 14 billion pounds of trash, much of it plastic is dumped in the world’s oceans every year.
• The worldwide fishing industry dumps an estimated 150,000 tons of plastic into the ocean each year, including packaging, plastic nets, lines, and buoys.
• About 1,200 plastic soft drink and salad dressing containers could carpet the average living room.
• It takes 1,050 HDPE (#2) milk jugs to make a six-foot plastic lumber park bench.
• Every year we make enough plastic film to shrink-wrap the state of Texas.
• Nearly every piece of plastic EVER made still exists today.

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