Ocean Pollution Statistics & Facts, 2020

What causes ocean pollution? 

• Plastics take 500-1000 years to degrade; currently 79% is sent to landfills or the ocean, while only 9% is recycled, and 12% gets incinerated. 
• Styrofoam cups take 50 years to biodegrade, Aluminum cans take 200 years, Nappies cups take 450 years, Plastic bottles take 450 years, and Fishing lines take 600 years. 
• Popular items found: Cigarette filters (32%), Food packaging (9%), Bottle caps (8%), Tableware (6%), Bottles (plastic) (6%), Plastic carrier bags (5%). 
• Cigarette filters are the most common item collected from beach pickups, more than 60M in 30 years – that’s just the ones we found. 
• In 2018’s international coastal cleanup day, 2.4 million butts of cigarettes got collected. 500 billion plastic bags get used every year - on average, the working life of these bags is 15 minutes. 
• Annually we discard 1 Trillion plastic bags worldwide; joining them together would circle the globe 4,200 times. 
• Annually we use 500 Billion plastic bottles – This means there are 66 times as many bottles as there are humans on the planet. 14% of our garbage is from these bottles, under half are collected for recycling, but only 7% become a new bottle. 
• 60% of the materials that form our cloths are plastic forms (Nylon, acrylic, polyester, etc). 
• In a typical laundry wash, 700,000 microplastic fibers come off into the water. 
• Annually, the U.S. disposes of 27.4 Billion nappies, many of which end up in our landfills and ocean. Annually, the U.S. discards 2 Billion razors and 1 Billion plastic toothbrushes. 
• In the UK and US alone, 500 Million plastic straws get thrown away annually. 

How much plastic is in the ocean? 

• 300 Million tons of plastic gets created yearly, and this weighs the same as the entire human population, and 50% is single-use only.
• An estimated 8 Million tons of plastic enters our oceans every year. 
• There are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic waste estimated to be in our oceans. 269,000 tons float, 4 billion microfibers per km² dwell below the surface. 
• 70% of our debris sinks into the ocean's ecosystem, 15% floats, and 15% lands on our beaches. In the past 10 years, we’ve made more plastic than the last century. 
• By 2050, the pollution of fish will be outnumbered by our dumped plastics. 
• In various studies, plastics made up 60-90% of the marine pollution found. 
• Ocean crusaders estimate there to be 46,000 plastic pieces in our waters per mile (squared). 
• As plastic decomposes over 100’s of years, it breaks into micro pieces and can spread all over the planet. 
• Other than incinerated plastics, the entire volume we ever created is still on our planet in some form. 
• Plastic bags are illegal in Kenya. People found using, selling, or manufacturing them risk 4 years of incarceration and a $40,000 fine. 

How long does plastic last in the ocean? Well, plastic was only invented in 1907, and mass production started between 1940s and 1950s.

Unfortunately for our oceans, every bit of plastic that was ever created still exists in some form as it takes 100’s of years to decompose, and even when it does, it merely turns into micro pieces then microfibers.   

In terms of the effects of plastic pollution on marine life - These plastics floating in our ocean or sinking to the bottom and turning into microfibers are particularly hazardous to fish, mammals, and sea life in general. 

They absorb toxins and chemicals from other forms of water pollution to become even more dangerous to the animals ingesting them.

Sources: PlasticOceans, OceanCrusaders, EarthDay, SAS, EcoWatch, GlobalCitizen 

Where does most the Ocean pollution come from? 

• 90% of the global ocean debris comes from 10 rivers alone. 
• 8 in Asia: Amur, Indus, Pearl, Yangtze, Yellow, Ganges, Hai He, Mekong; 
• 2 in Africa: Niger and the Nile. 

Top 10 rivers   

• 1,469,481 tons - Chang Jiang (Yangtze River) 
• 164,332 tons - Indus 
• 124,249 tons - Huang He (Yellow River) 
• 91,858 tons - Hai He 
• 84,792 tons - Nile 
• 72,845 tons - Meghna, Brahmaputra, Ganges 
• 52,958 tons - Zhujiang (Pearl River) 
• 38,267 tons - Amur  
• 35,196 tons - Niger 
• 33,431 tons - Mekong   

As mentioned earlier, there was an estimated 8 million tons of plastic ending up in our oceans every year, and one Dr. Christian Schmidt and his team set out to find how it gets there as part of a critical task of finding out the causes of ocean pollution through their entry points.   

In the last decade, researches spent a great deal of time analyzing the waste in the water around some 57 large rivers that flow into our oceans. 

From studying the river and surrounding landscape, they were able to estimate that 10 rivers are the hosts of 90% of the plastics getting dumped into the oceans.   

The estimates were made by Schmidt and his team calculating waste quantities per cubic meter, then pairing them against the other 57 in the study… these 10 had the highest counts of plastic:   

Eight of the rivers sending this volume of plastic are from Asia: The Amur, Indus, Pearl, Yangtze, Yellow, Ganges, Hai He, Mekong, and in Africa. The other two are - the river Niger and the Nile.   

Sources: UN Environment 

How does ocean pollution affect humans? 

• Coastal water contamination is responsible for 250 million clinical cases of human diseases annually. 
• Only 1 in 20 adults bathing are at risk from becoming ill after a single bathing visit in waters considered ‘acceptable’ by microbial standards. 
• At the current rate, by the end of the century, our waters will be 150% more acidic than now. 
• 80% of sewage discharged into the Mediterranean Sea is untreated. 
• Contaminated shellfish is the cause of 50,000-100,000 deaths annually due to damaged immune systems and cancer. 
• People that primarily eat seafood as their diets like indigenous people of the Canadian Arctic and Greenland are found to be contaminated by POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants). 
• 100% of the population of East Greenland has blood contamination. 
• The direct medical and health costs of polluted waters are $16 Billion globally each year. 
• Economic losses due to non-indigenous species getting introduced into the ocean are in the 100’s of million dollars. 
• 70% of the oxygen we and other land animals is directly from the sea. 

It’s no illusion that to survive, man needs a harmonious relationship with the planet's oceans, in fact, over 70% of the oxygen we breathe is directly created by marine plants. What we do on land impacts what goes on offshore, for example, 30% of our CO2 emissions are absorbed by our oceans, and our waste disposal greatly influences the toxicity of its ecosystem and wildlife.   

When looking at ocean pollution effects on humans, the plastics, metals, and chemicals found in polluted water contaminate our very own seafood and water supplies. This can cause a variety of severe problems for us, such as nervous system damage, kidney issues, and reproductive or hormonal issues.   

How ocean pollution affects humans: The bacteria in the water reacts with the metals we dispose of like mercury, transforming them into their most toxic forms. This, in turn, is absorbed by a variety of marine plant life – which is a typical food of the fish we consume, so in turn, this toxic waste boomerangs back up the food chain to us after we dispose of it. Exposure to this poisonous methylmercury has been linked heavily to causing heart disease, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.   

Even ingesting the polluted waters, we’ve created in some beaches can cause rashes, diarrhea and stomach aches.   

Sources: WorldOceanNetwork, WWF, NRDC