Manage plastic pollution to save the environment

Plastic is one of the most ubiquitous manmade compounds on earth. Since large-scale production of the synthetic materials began in the early 1950s to 2015, humans have created more than 8.3 billion metric tons of plastics.

Alarmingly, more than half of that plastic was produced in the last 13 years. Unless something drastic is done, that trend is set to increase further in the future. It’s estimated that at least eight million metric tonnes of plastic ends up in the oceans every year with detrimental impacts on species, habitat and people.