As we all know, plastic pollution is harmful in too many ways to count. Plastic was the economic and convenient solution, but not the ecological one. In this article, there are a few facts and statistics about plastic pollution for those who wish to be more informed.

-Plastic can take up to one thousand years to fully decompose. That is 10 centuries. This has been taught more in schools recently, so this is basically common knowledge.

-The first piece of plastic was created in 1907, 112 years ago. If we put the first fact together with this one, we can reach one clear conclusion: every piece of plastic ever made is still on Earth. Read that again, and realize the damage we are causing ourselves and the environment we live in.

-Since the 1950s, approximately 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced worldwide.

-9% of all of that, has been recycled. Only 9%.

-Of all the beach litter worldwide, 73% is solely plastic.

-Every single minute, around one million plastic bottles are bought around the world. Also, per minute, 2 million plastic bags are used around the world.

-The average person (yes, this includes you, the one reading this), eats 70,000 micro plastics each year.

-Plastic production has doubled over the past 50 years.

-Scientists predict that by 2050 there will be more plastic in our oceans than fish.

Plastic has proved itself countless times as the worst possible material to use at the rate we are using. The majority of plastic used worldwide is single-use, meaning it is used only once, for an average of 12 minutes. Even if we recycle every piece of plastic on Earth right now, that will still not be enough. What we need is a solution to plastic, and we need it fast.