tonnes of plastic leaked into Canada’s environment in 2022
About 1.4% of the plastic Canada threw away ended up in the environment instead of being collected.
Wildlife
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A floating marina bin caught 0.18 kg of litter in a month
The only independent field test of a Seabin found it caught 0.18 kg of litter in 750 hours in a Plymouth marina, along with…
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‘Plasticorals,’ coral rubble fused with plastic, represent a new form of plastic pollution
During routine beach litter surveys on the subtropical island of Okinawa, Japan, researchers came across small, brightly colored specks in the pale coral rubble.…
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171 trillion plastic particles now float on the world’s oceans
Surface plastic has risen sharply since 2005 and is mostly microplastic, according to 40 years of ocean sampling.
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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a plastic soup, not an island
At least 79,000 tonnes of plastic drift across 1.6 million square kilometres, and nearly half the mass is abandoned fishing nets.
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About 2% of all fishing gear is lost at sea every year
Interviews with fishers worldwide show enormous annual losses of nets, lines, hooks and traps, a lethal source of ocean plastic.
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Nine in ten seabirds have eaten plastic; 99% of species will by 2050
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) modelling of decades of seabird studies found plastic ingestion is global, pervasive and rising fast.
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A single piece of plastic gives a sea turtle a one-in-five chance of death
Post-mortem data from Queensland, Australia, show that eating just 14 pieces of plastic gives a turtle a 50% chance of dying.
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914 marine species are known to have swallowed or been tangled in plastic
The definitive species count for plastic ingestion and entanglement has more than tripled since 1997.
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‘Plasticosis’: the first disease named after plastic
Seabirds on Lord Howe Island develop scar tissue in their stomachs in proportion to how much plastic they have eaten.