Drowning in plastic
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Drowning in plastic
For the average American, the daily flows of materials (other than water) total more than twenty times a person’s body weight, nearly all of it waste.
Paul Hawken • Natural Capitalism
human-manufactured plastics have found their way into every crevice, even in the deepest trenches of the ocean and the air above the Arctic.27 In the Anthropocene, many human activities become so large they are hard to fathom. In the Anthropocene, enough plastic has been made that were it cling film it could wrap around the Earth completely.28 In t
... See morePaul Behrens • The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Futures from the Frontiers of Climate Science
Unlike plastic, glass and metal (including aluminum) can be recycled infinitely without losing quality or purity in the product.
National Geographic • 7 Things You Didn’t Know About Plastic (and Recycling)
The numbers involved are not trivial: in per capita terms the annual generation of plastic packaging waste alone is now close to 40
Vaclav Smil • Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization
Growth in material consumption is ultimately unsustainable