Australia uses and wastes too much plastic

• 311 million tonnes of plastic are produced worldwide every year

• Australians use 13 million plastic bags every day

• Australians send over 690kg of waste to landfill every year - making us the second highest producers of waste per person in the world

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Plastic breaks down and enters our food chain

• Many plastics leach toxins into food and drinks, especially when exposed to heat or sunlight

• Very small pieces of broken down plastic (called microplastics) are inadvertently consumed by animals then travel up the food chain to humans​

• Edible fish in Sydney Harbour have been shown to have nanoparticles (extremely small pieces) of plastic in their flesh

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Oceans are greatly affected by our plastic use

• 35 billion pieces of visible plastic are in Australian waters

• 100,000 marine creatures and 1 million seabirds die every year from either eating or getting caught in plastic. The animals die and decay and the cycle repeats

• 100% of Fleshfooted Shearwater seabird chicks on Lord Howe Island in NSW have plastic in their stomachs, which has lead to a 50% decline in population over the past 20 years

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Coral reefs are in danger

• Coral bleaching and coral death is happening fast due to warmer water temperatures and pollution. When plastic and toxins come into contact with coral it makes them more susceptible to disease and death    

• One third of corals in the Great Barrier Reef were affected by bleaching in 2016 and 2017.  Mass bleaching two years in a row is an extraordinary event and means the coral doesn't have a chance to recover

• All coral reefs could die within 80 years unless action is taken, according to Sir David Attenborough

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Sources:

  abc.net.au

  australianethical.com.au

  cleanup.org.au

  gbrmpa.gov.au

  illawarramercury.com.au

  independent.co.uk

  oceancrusaders.org 

  twohandsproject.org