Some 8 million metric tons of plastic debris end up in the ocean each year, the equivalent of a garbage truck every minute.
Consumers buy a million plastic drinking bottles a minute and use trillions of plastic bags every year, not to mention an immense amount of polyester and other synthetic textiles. Less than a tenth of all that material is recycled. Companies and governments have promised to cut back and reuse more, but even if those targets were met, they’d only reduce the plastic flowing into the ocean by 7% by 2040.
