Plastic Pollution

Plastics have numerous valuable uses, humans have come addicted to single-use plastic products with severe environmental, social, economic, and health consequences. Around the world, one million plastic bottles are bought every minute, while over to five trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year. In total, half of all plastic produced is designed for single- use purposes – used just once and thrown away. Plastics including microplastics are now ubiquitous in our natural environment. They are getting part of the Earth’s pollution history and a marker of the Anthropocene, our current human era.