Every year, about 9 million tons of plastic waste are dumped into the world’s oceans, equivalent to dumping the contents of one garbage truck into the ocean every minute. (If no action is taken, this is expected to increase to the equivalent of two trucks per minute by 2030 and four per minute by 2050.) Even more plastic comes into the marine environment from terrestrial sources, where plastic slowly breaks down into smaller and smaller particles called microplastics. Up to 51 trillion microplastic particles float in our oceans. When ingested by marine and terrestrial organisms, they can have adverse health effects, from immune responses and toxic contamination to malnutrition and starvation.
A team of international researchers led by Cornell University found out that plastic waste drifting in the ocean can adversely impact the corals it gets tangled with, as the material provides a favorable environment for microbial colonization. “Plastics make ideal vessels for colonizing microscopic organisms that could trigger disease if they come into contact with corals,” she continued. This is associated with the globally devastating group of coral diseases known as white syndromes.” If a plastic latches itself onto a coral, it becomes prone to disease. In particular, the study reported that once this happens, the likelihood of the coral to get a disease increases by 20 times.
the amount of plastic that will impact the marine environment will skyrocket to 15.7 billion items, which will ultimately affect corals the world over. When this happens, the effects will not only be felt by the tourism industry but by those in fishing and coastal protection as well – a combined net worth of $357 billion in goods and services provided.
As many as 100,000 marine mammals die each year as a result of ingesting plastic, and members of over 50 species of seabird, many already endangered, have died after ingesting plastic pellets. 100 million lbs of plastic trash enter the world's oceans each year, not including lost fishing nets and other gear. The 70,000 ships in the world fleet dump up to 640,000 plastic containers daily, about 10% of the total, as part of the six million tonnes of solid waste attributed to ships each year.
It is estimated that 8m tonnes of plastic waste finds its way in to the ocean each year. Plastic is notoriously difficult to remove cannot be destroyed (except by incineration). The impacts are increasingly apparent: great rafts of plastic are congregating in ocean gyres, blame games have broken out between neighbouring countries, and marine species face poisoning from the associated toxins. There may even be direct risks for humans, especially the 400m or so poor people who depend critically on fish for their food; nano-plastics are in most marine food, especially filter feeders like mussels and oysters.
Half of all sea turtles worldwide have eaten plastic. Some starve after doing so, mistakenly thinking that they have eaten enough because their stomachs are full. Similarly, seabirds are also prone to starvation caused by eating plastic waste, with up to a million dying every year due to plastics. Hermit crabs are deceived into using plastic bottles as "shells". When a hermit crab dies, it emits an odor that tells other crabs a shell is available. As such, a dead crab can draw more and more crabs to plastic waste.
China is the biggest emitter of plastic marine litter and along with the US and India has a very large plastic manufacturing sector.
There will be a greater weight of plastic than fish in the world's oceans by 2050.