A lot of us have seen the photos and video clips of waves full of plastic, straws stuck in turtles nostrils, and marine life entangled in ghost nets, but exactly how much plastic is really in the ocean? It’s impossible to know the exact amount, but the rise in deep sea plastic hanging about in some of the ocean’s most untouched locations sheds some light on the extent of the problem. According to the National Geographic the best guess is from a 2015 study which indicated there was roughly 150 million metric tonnes of plastic already in the ocean, and assuming things remain the same, it’s estimates that accumulation will become 600 million metric tons by 2040.
To break that down a little… Current estimates show that at least 8 million pieces of plastic are entering the ocean every single day and it's estimated that approximately 10 million tonnes of plastic ends up in the ocean each year. This is predicted to triple to 29 million tonnes a year by 2040. Scarily, image's like the one above will only become increasingly common.
Now, this sounds like a lot of pollution, and it is! However, you may be wondering why you're not hit by waves of trash each time you visit the beach. That's because only a small percentage of waste that ends up in the ocean remains floating, the rest will sink beneath the surface and start to break up into microplastics. This part is particularly worrying as often marine life will ingest these tiny plastic particles which can potentially be fatal for them, especially if ingested in large amounts. It’s not just marine life that are ingesting these plastics – we are too! 1 in 3 fish caught for human consumption contains plastic and this is only on the rise.
More plastic is being used than ever, cheap to produce, strong and durable. However, that also means it rarely breaks down. Research suggest it takes plastic around 450 years to break down into microplastics in the ocean. So considering plastic has only really been in circulation since the early 1900's this means every single piece of plastic ever produced still exists today.
Here, at Riptide 5, it’s important to us that we are not contributing to the plastic pollution crisis and this is why we’ve made sure all of our packaging is plastic free and eco friendly. We don’t just stop there though, with the worrying data showing that this crisis is only going to get worse we feel it's important to contribute by donating 5% of profits to the removal of plastic pollution from the ocean as well.