As part of the campaign, Indonesia, one of world’s top plastic polluters, committed to slashing its marine litter by 70 percent by 2025.

although preliminary research suggests some plastics could be toxic to humans, and could potentially increase the risk of cancer and liver damage, reproductive problems, and other negative health effects.

A growing body of evidence suggests humans are consuming plastics through the seafood we eat.

Ocean Conservancy says plastics are believed to threaten at least 600 different wildlife species. One in three leatherback turtles, which often mistake plastic bags for edible jellyfish, have been found with plastic in their bellies. In February, a dead whale beached on Norway’s coast had 30 plastic bags in its stomach. Ninety percent of seabirds, including albatross and petrels, are now eating plastics on a regular basis. By 2050, that figure is expected to rise to 100 percent.

Plastic bags are used for an average of 12 minutes each. But it could take up to 500 years or more for a plastic bag to degrade in a landfill. 

volunteers in the group’s International Coastal Cleanup event collected almost 1 million plastic beverage bottles, 800,000 plastic bottle caps, and about half a million each of plastic bags and drinking straws — and this was in just a single day.  

Imagine an area 34 times the size of Manhattan. Now imagine it covered ankle-deep in plastic waste — piles of soda bottles and plastic bags, takeout containers by the mile, drinking straws as far as the eye can see.

Plastics are non-biodegradable and merely break down into smaller and smaller pieces with exposure to sunlight.

A 2016 paper concluded that a single cycle of a washing machine could release more than 700,000 microplastic fibers into the environment.

that today’s cars and planes are, by volume, about 50% plastic