National Geographic
The Pacific Ocean is home to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which also is known as the “World’s Largest Landfill,” according to the European Commission. An estimated 3.5 million tons of trash reside in this landfill that are the result of whirling currents in the Pacific Ocean that pull trash and pollution into the ocean. The landfill’s area is the size of Europe, or 3.45 million kilometers squared -- that’s a lot of trash.
Green Networld
"Seventy-three different kinds of pesticides have been found in groundwater, which is potential drinking water."[1]
"The Mississippi River - which drains the lands of nearly 40% of the continental United Sates ? carries an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of nitrogen pollution into the Gulf of Mexico each year. The resulting dead zone in the Gulf each summer is about the size of Massachusetts."[2]
"Polluted drinking waters are a problem for about half of the world?s population. Each year there are about 250 million cases of water-based diseases, resulting in roughly 5 to 10 million deaths."[2]
"The risk of cancer from breathing diesel exhaust is about ten times more than ingesting all other toxic air pollutants combined, with diesel emissions contributing to over 70% of the cancer risk from air pollution in the USA."[4]
"Emissions from ocean-going ships contribute to approximately 60,000 deaths each year, mostly from heart and lung- related cancers. Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong rank within the world?s top 5 busiest ports, and experience a higher impact from emissions-related health issues."[4]
[5]
"According to the US-EPA, emissions from power plants contribute to over 2,800 lung cancer deaths and 38,200 heart attacks annually in the US."[4]
"According to the World Health Organization, if you are one of the 18 million residents of Cairo: - Breathing daily air pollution is like smoking 20 cigarettes a day - You take in over 20 times the acceptable level of air pollution each day."[4]
"The World Bank reported in 2002 that pollution causes 2.42 billion dollars worth of damage to the Egyptian environment annually - equaling about 5 percent of the country?s annual gross domestic product."[4]
"Over 80% of items in landfills can be recycled, but they?re not."[2]
"Only about one-tenth of all solid garbage in the United States gets recycled."[3]
- Pollution is one of the biggest global killers, affecting over 100 million people. That’s comparable to global diseases like malaria and HIV.
- Over 1 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water. 5,000 people die each day due to dirty drinking water.
- 14 billion pounds of garbage are dumped into the ocean every year. Most of it is plastic.
- Over 1 million seabirds and 100,000 sea mammals are killed by pollution every year.
- People who live in places with high levels of air pollutants have a 20% higher risk of death from lung cancer than people who live in less-polluted areas.
- The Mississippi River carries an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of nitrogen pollution into the Gulf of Mexico each year, creating a “dead zone” in the Gulf each summer about the size of New Jersey.
- Approximately 46% of the lakes in America are too polluted for fishing, aquatic life, or swimming.
- Americans make up an estimated 5% of the world’s population. However, the U.S. produces an estimated 30% of the world’s waste and uses 25% of the world’s resources.
- Each year 1.2 trillion gallons of untreated sewage, stormwater, and industrial waste are dumped into U.S. water.
- While children only make up 10% of the world’s population, over 40% of the global burden of disease falls on them. More than 3 million children under age five die annually from environmental factors.
- Recycling and composting prevented 85 million tons of material away from being disposed of in 2010, up from 18 million tons in 1980.
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Waste and Recycling Facts
WASTE
The average American office worker uses about 500 disposable cups every year.[1]
Every year, Americans throw away enough paper and plastic cups, forks, and spoons to circle the equator 300 times.1
Seattle, Washington, Portland, Oregon, Westchester NY, Berkeley, and Malibu California have all banned Styrofoam foodware. Laguna Beach and Santa Monica have banned all polystyrene (#6) foodware.[2]
During 2009’s International Coastal Cleanup, the Ocean Conservancy found that plastic bags were the second-most common kind of waste found, at 1 out of ten items picked up and tallied.[3]
Over 7 billion pounds of PVC are thrown away in the U.S. each year. Only 18 million pounds of that, about one quarter of 1 percent, is recycled.3
Chlorine production for PVC uses almost as much energy as the annual output of eight medium-sized nuclear power plants each year.[4]
After Ireland created a 15-cent charge per plastic bag in 2002, bag consumption dropped by 90 percent. In 2008, the average person in Ireland used 27 plastic bags, while the average person in Britain used 220. The program has raised millions of euros in revenue.[5]
The state of California spends about 25 million dollars sending plastic bags to landfill each year, and another 8.5 million dollars to remove littered bags from streets.[6]
Every year, Americans use approximately 102.1 billion plastic bags, creating tons of landfill waste.
Plastic bags do not biodegrade. Light breaks them down into smaller and smaller particles that contaminate the soil and water and are expensive and difficult to remove.6
Less than 1 percent of plastic bags are recycled each year. Recycling one ton of plastic bags costs $4,000. The recycled product can be sold for $32.6
When the small particles from photodegraded plastic bags get into the water, they are ingested by filter feeding marine animals. Biotoxins like PCBs that are in the particles are then passed up the food chain, including up to humans.[7]
The City of San Francisco determined that it costs 17 cents for them to handle each discarded bag. 7
In 2003, 290 million tires were discarded. 130 million of these tires were burned as fuel.[8]
In 2004, the Rubber Manufacturers Association estimated that 275 million tires were in stockpiles. Tires in stockpiles can serve as a breeding ground for mosquitoes and a habitat for rodents. Because they retain heat, these piles easily ignite, creating toxin-emitting, hard-to-extinguish fires that can burn for months.8
The oil from just one oil change is enough to contaminate one million gallons of fresh water. Americans who change their own oil throw away 120 million gallons of reusable oil every year.[9]
More than 2 billion books, 350 million magazines, and 24 billion newspapers are published each year. [10]
The average American uses about the equivalent of one 100-foot-tall Douglas fir tree in paper and wood products each year.10
The average office worker in the US uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year. That’s four million tons of copy paper used annually. Office workers in the US generate approximately two pounds of paper and paperboard products every day. 10
Airports and airlines recycle less than 20 percent of the 425,000 tons of passenger-related waste they produce each year.[11]
The estimated 2.6 billion holiday cards sold each year in the U.S. could fill a football field 10 stories high.[12]
Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, an extra million tons of waste is generated each week.12
38,000 miles of ribbon are thrown away each year, enough to tie a bow around the Earth.12
In 2008, Paper and paperboard made up 31% of municipal waste. Plastics were 12%.[13]
In 2008, only 23.1% of glass disposed of was recycled, and only 7.1% of plastics and 21.1% of aluminum.13
About 31% of MSW generated in the US in 2008 was containers and packaging, or 76,760 thousand tons. Only 43.7% of that was recycled.13
In 2008, the average amount of waste generated by each person in America per day was 4.5 pounds. 1.1 pounds of that was recycled, and .4 pounds, including yard waste, was sent to composting. In total, 24.3% of waste was recycled, 8.9% was composted, and 66.8% was sent to a landfill or incinerated. 13
The average American employee consumes 2.5 cans of soda each day at work.[14]
The beverage industry used 46 percent less packaging in 2006 than in 1990, even with a 24 percent increase in beverage sales in that time.[15]
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Statistics on Pollution in the Pacific Ocean
by Rachel Nall, Demand Media
Plastic bottles are a major pollution concern in the Pacific Ocean.
The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean in the world, touching a number of continents including North and South America, Australia, Antarctica and Asia. While beachgoers may enjoy the pacific coastlines in cities such as San Diego and Malibu, California, the large expanse of the Pacific Ocean can be home to large amounts of pollution. Knowing the facts about pollution in the Pacific Ocean can help you do your part to keep it clean.
The World’s Largest Landfill
The Pacific Ocean is home to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which also is known as the “World’s Largest Landfill,” according to the European Commission. An estimated 3.5 million tons of trash reside in this landfill that are the result of whirling currents in the Pacific Ocean that pull trash and pollution into the ocean. The landfill’s area is the size of Europe, or 3.45 million kilometers squared -- that’s a lot of trash.
Pollution Sources
Pollution is everyone’s responsibility. In terms of the Pacific Ocean, as estimated 20 percent of the pollution comes from ships at sea that may dump waste or cargo, either purposefully or accidentally, according to the Public Broadcasting System. Less than 20 percent comes from beachgoers who allow their trash to be swept away at sea (see Reference 3). Other sources include leftovers from storm drainage systems and trash from other countries beside the United States connected to the Pacific Ocean, including China, Japan and Mexico.
Effects on Fish
Fish and marine life comprise the food chain in the Pacific Ocean, helping to maintain life’s natural balance and keep marine species from becoming extinct. Due to the high amount of plastic in the Pacific Ocean, the fish species also have been affected. Fish ingest an estimated 12,000 to 24,000 tons of plastic per year in the Pacific Ocean, according to research from the University of California San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Institute researchers collected 141 fishes of 27 species and found that 9.2 percent of the fish had small bits of plastic debris in their stomachs.
Persistent Organic Pollutants
In addition to the pollutants in the water, the Pacific Ocean circulates pollutants in the air. Known as persistent organic pollutants or POPs, these toxic chemicals include aldrin, dieldrin, heptachlor and toxaphene (see Reference 2). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified 12 POPs that are long-lasting in the environment. Factories or chemicals used in industrial and agricultural applications have produced these POPs (see Reference 2). POPs can be moved through water currents into southeast and central Asia into the Pacific Ocean.
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