QUICK FACTS ON PLASTIC POLLUTION

A plastic milk jug takes 1 million years to decompose.

A plastic cup can take 50 – 80 years to decompose.

Recycled plastic can be used to make things like trash cans, park benches, playground equipment, decks and kayaks.

A plastic soda bottle begins to decompose in 700 years.

Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour.

Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1 million sea creatures every year.

Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.

If plastic bottles are thrown into incinerators they release toxic gases.

Today, Americans generate 10.5 million tons of plastic waste a year, but recycle only 1 or 2 % of it.

An estimated 14 billion pounds of trash, much of it plastic, is dumped into the world's oceans every year.

The worldwide fishing industry dumps an estimated 150,000 tons of plastic into the ocean each year, including packaging, plastic nets, lines and buoys.

About 1,200 plastic soft drink and salad dressing bottles could carpet the average living room.

It takes 1,050 milk jugs make a six foot plastic lumber park bench.

Every year we make enough plastic film to shrink wrap the state of Texas.

NEARLY EVERY PIECE OF PLASTIC EVER MADE STILL EXISTS TODAY!