Midway Atoll is a tiny island in the North Pacific Ocean. If you stand on the shore of the island, away from the world and culture, you will feel calm and humble. All this until you bend down and look down, at your feet. There, you will see a broken helmet, the head of a doll, the handle of an umbrella and a flip flop.
All this has not fallen from a plane, nor from a passing ship… The plastic helmet, the broken umbrella, the broken flip flops, as well as many other rubbish, came here by the tide αν they came from faraway China or the United States. They traveled thousands of miles.
Plastic is now an integral part of our lives. Plastic lids on coffee cups, plastic cutlery, plastic water bottles, plastic bags that will be used only once and will be thrown in the trash. And from there… to landfills or… to the Ocean.
Almost every piece of plastic that has ever been made still exists today. More than five trillion pieces of plastic are already in the oceans, and by 2050, plastic at sea will be more than fish, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
About 8 million tons of plastic waste are dumped into the ocean on an annual basis, and this is getting worse every year, as Americans alone use 2,5 million plastic bottles every hour.