References and Script Annotations
References and Script Annotations
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One garbage truck holds about 10 or 20 metric tons. That’s also how much plastic waste ends up here [in the ocean] … every single minute.
8-14 million metric tons (Mt) of ocean plastic per year
/ 525,600 mins per year = ~15-23 metric tons per min.
…by the end of this year, at least 550,000 truckloads will end up in the big blue
~ 11 Mt plastic waste per year
/ 20 metric tons per truck = 550,000 truck loads by weight per year).
30 million pounds of trash is how much human beings put into the ocean in just 15 hours
Lower estimate 8 Mt per year
/ 8,750 hours = 914 metric tons per hour
30 million lbs = 13607 metric tons
13607 metric tons / 914 metric tons per hour = 14.88 hours
it’s impossible to clean our way out of this problem
Size distribution and scale of ocean plastics:
Future projections:
The first plastic was made from a mix of natural and synthetic ingredients. 50 years later [1907], we cooked up the first fully synthetic plastic
plastic doesn’t biodegrade.
A plastic bottle in a landfill can take 450 years to break down.
Since its invention, we’ve produced more than 8.3 billion metric tons of new plastic.
that's enough plastic to fill more than 5000 Giza pyramids
One cubic meter of nurdles (plastic pellets) weighs ~635kg
8.3 billion metric tons = 8.3 x 10^12 kg
8.3 x 10^12 kg of nurdles / 635 kg per cubic meter of nurdles = 13,070,866,141 (~13 billion) cubic meters of nurdles
Great pyramid of Giza volume is ~2.6 million cubic meters
13,070,866,141 / 2,600,000 = ~ 5027 Giza pyramids
If we keep making more and more plastic at our current pace, in the next 20 years we’ll make as much as we’ve made in the last two centuries.
[by 2040] the amount of plastic going into the ocean could triple compared to today.
By 2050, the plastic in the ocean could weigh more than all of the fish.
Here in the US, just 9% of plastic gets recycled. And only 10% of that gets turned into something that can be recycled a second time. Globally, we’re only recycling about 15% of the plastic that is produced.
10% recycled a second time https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1700782
US 8.7% in 2018 https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/plastics-material-specific-data
15% globally https://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/assets/2020/07/breakingtheplasticwave_report.pdf
Plastic is made from fossil fuels, which means plastic is also a climate and greenhouse gas problem. Today, over 90% of plastic polymers are made from extracted fossil fuels like oil and natural gas.
Fueling plastics https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Fueling-Plastics-Fossils-Plastics-Petrochemical-Feedstocks.pdf
Natural gas use US https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=34&t=6
Strategies to reduce the global carbon footprint of plastics https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0459-z
About 6% of all the oil we use on Earth goes to making plastic. That’s about as much as all of the airplanes in the world use.
Extracting, refining, and transporting fossil fuels to make plastic emits the equivalent of almost 25 million cars worth of carbon every year…by 2050 this stuff will account for 20% of total oil consumption.
In the next 20 years, plastic alone could account for 15% of the carbon we can safely emit every year if we want to keep warming under 2˚ Celsius
Scientists have found plastics in snow on Mount Everest, in Earth’s deepest ocean trench, and even in Antarctica.
Mariana Trench https://sos.noaa.gov/education/phenomenon-based-learning/plastic-in-mariana-trench/
Deep marine environments
Antarctica https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0025326X20302484?via%3Dihub
the Great Pacific Garbage Patch GPGP, a floating collection of garbage roughly the size of France. …in reality, this is the GPGP. It’s mostly microplastic, pieces less than 20 cm across.
One 20 cm piece of plastic can become more than 60,000 pieces of microplastic.
More than 2200 species impacted
That plastic moves around the foodweb, and can even end up on our plates.
[Henderson Island] has one of the highest densities of plastic pollution on the planet…
Around 38 million pieces of plastic junk have found their way to the island. Scientists have uncovered toys here from the ‘80s and ‘90s. Plastic that got its start on every continent except antarctica.
Henderson Island debris survey (2017) https://www.pnas.org/content/114/23/6052
There are around four billion pieces of microplastic in just the top five centimeters of sand on [Henderson] island.
70 to 80 percent of plastic waste that winds up in the ocean escapes from rivers and coastlines.
We used to think 10 or so major rivers were responsible for most [river plastic polluting the ocean] …according to recent studies, more like 1,500 rivers play a part in dumping plastic into the sea.
…about 2 billion people on Earth don’t have access to waste management
But the people in those countries don’t generate as much plastic waste. The U.S., where nearly everyone has access to modern waste management, is still near the top ten when it comes to ocean plastic pollution.
That’s because we simply use so much more plastic than the rest of the world. Each year, an average American creates 130 kg of plastic trash
And we also ship a lot of our plastic trash overseas, especially to places where they already lack good waste management so it has a high chance of escaping into the environment.
https://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/assets/2020/07/breakingtheplasticwave_report.pdf
Interview with Dr. Winnie Lau, Pew Trusts
30 million pounds of plastic is three ten thousandths of the plastic waste made by just the United States in a single year.
42 Mt per year https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abd0288
30,000,000 lbs = 13607 metric tons
13607 metric tons / 42,000,000 metric tons per year = ~ 0.0003
And it’s just half of the plastic trash that’s entered the ocean just in the form of masks, gloves, and other medical waste solely due to the COVID pandemic.
…it’s probably impossible to use nets to filter trash out of the ocean without scooping up marine life too.
Ocean Cleanup Environmental Impact Report: https://assets.theoceancleanup.com/app/uploads/2019/04/TOC_EIA_2018.pdf
An analysis of one large ocean skimming project found that to clean up just 5% of ocean plastic by the year 2150, it would have to run 200 big diesel ships 24/7 during that time.
…most plastic we harvest from the water is so contaminated we can’t recycle it. And remember, a lot of the plastic that is recycled just becomes more single use, unrecyclable plastic stuff.
8 things we can start doing today to change our plastic future… By reducing, substituting, recycling, and disposing of plastic in these ways, we can cut our total plastic waste by 90% by 2040, and lower ocean plastic pollution by 80%. That’s 125 million metric tons of plastic waste that doesn’t make its way into the environment.