More plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050
According to a new report "The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of plastics," by the World Economic Forum and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, there are over 150 million tonnes of plastics in the ocean today. At least 8 million tonnes of plastics leak into the ocean every year. This is equivalent to one garbage truck being dumped in the ocean every minute. Today, only 14% of the plastic packaging are collected for recycling. As this is not bad enough, almost a third of all plastic packaging does not get collected, ending up in nature or clogging up infrastructure. In countries where the infrastructure is deficient, you could only imagine the added costs of plastic, money that could be spent in improving the local conditions. The report found out that after a short first-use cycle, 95% of the economic value of plastic packaging is lost to the economy, which was estimated as something between US$80 and US$120 billion annually. That is an awful lot of money! To get to...