• Do you want to eat fish and shellfish whose hormones have been disrupted by contaminants from plastic pollution?
• Do you want to see mounds of plastic debris along riverbanks and on beaches when you walk along them?
• Do you want the coastline to be littered with the corpses of sea creatures dead from starvation, suffocation, infection, drowning or entanglement caused by plastics?
• Do you want to face the effects that unhealthy oceans have on the Earth's ecosystems – unhealthy air and unhealthy land? And that means ALL air and ALL land, not just the air and land that borders on the ocean.

Or... do you want to help make a change for the better?

Here are the facts...

Plastic kills fish, seabirds and marine mammals through ingestion, starvation, suffocation, infection, drowning, and entanglement. An estimated 100,000 marine mammal and sea turtle deaths every year in the North Pacific are related to entanglement in plastic fishing nets and fishing line. As if that’s not enough, between 70% and 100% of seabirds are affected by plastic ingestion, depending on species and location. They sometimes mistakenly feed plastic to their young, killing the chicks.

Plastic debris settles on the ocean floor, interfering with the natural process of gas exchange between the seabed and the water, disrupting the delicate system that oxygenates the ocean.

Plastics absorb pollutants that are then released into ocean waters, causing effects such as hormone disruption in sea creatures. They also transport micro-organisms such as bacteria to places where they would not naturally occur, affecting shoreline ecosystems.

The problem is escalating, fast...

• Between 1960 and 2003, the average amount of garbage generated per person per day in the US increased from 2.7 pounds to 4.5 pounds, a 60% increase. Plastics are the fastest-growing component – only around 2% of plastic is recycled.
• Micro-sized plastic debris in the North Pacific tripled during the decade to 1995-2005.
• Near the coast of Japan, plastic debris increased by a factor of 10 every 2-3 years during the same period.
• The situation is even worse in the Arctic and Antarctic as debris is pushed polewards.

How long does it take for plastic to break down in the world's oceans? The short answer is, we don't know. What we do know is that it lasts longer than the length of time that plastics have been in existence – over 100 years. Scientists' estimates of how long plastics may endure vary from hundreds of years to... forever.

What does this have to do with you?

• It doesn’t matter where you live. An estimated 80% of plastic debris comes from the run-off from urban areas. Plastic litter ends up in rivers and storm drains that carry it to the ocean.
• Once this plastic is in the water, it is almost impossible to remove it due to its small size and large quantity. It is there to stay.
• So the best way to prevent the problem from getting worse is to stop plastic from urban areas getting into the rivers and oceans in the first place.

Environmental and government agencies are already working with businesses to reduce industrial discharge of plastics.

Here’s what you can do.