Plastic Pollution

• The total UK soft drinks consumption exceeded 14.2 billion litres, or 227 litres per capita in 2012, with a market value of nearly £15 billion.
• Only 25% of plastic bottles get downcycled, the rest ends up in landfills or goes astray.
• In the environment, plastic breaks down into small particles that attract toxic chemicals. These particles are ingested by wildlife on land and in the ocean, ultimately contaminating the food chain.
• The amount of plastic pollution in the ocean is expanding at a catastrophic rate, but there are similar concentrations of plastic in the desert, in every community around the world, in our homes and even in our blood and urine. 
• Consumption of disposable plastics—bags, bottles, cups, straws and so forth—has spiraled out of control. These items only are used for seconds, hours or days, but their remains last forever.
• Along with the toxic chemicals released from the breakdown of plastic, marine animals also take in other chemicals that the plastic has accumulated from outside sources in the water.
• Pollutants become more concentrated as animals eat other contaminated animals—which is bad news for us, the animals at the top of the food chain.
• Bisphenol-A or BPA is an endocrine disruptor and  has been linked to cancer, infertility, obesity and early puberty in numerous animal studies.  The CDC (US) has found this chemical in the blood of 93 percent of people they tested.

Water Crisis

• 780 million people lack access to safe water. That’s approximately twelve times the UK population.
• One third of the people on earth lack adequate sanitation.
• It would take 1/3 of what the world spends on bottled water in one year to pay for projects providing water to everyone in need.
• New ‘water barons' - Wall Street banks and elitist multibillionaires - are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace.

Watch and learn

•  The Story of Bottled Water
•  Plastic Planet
•  Plasticized
•  Addicted to Plastic

Some good people...

   WaterAid Water and sanitation for all

   Boyan Slat The Ocean Clean Up

   Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau

   Speak Up For Blue Ocean Conservation

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