According to the Washington Post, each American trashes the equivalent of 100 plastic water bottles annually. The United States Population has grown 60% since 1960 but our trash grew 200%.
Of the 268 million tons of trash generated by Americans in 2017, a third was recycled or composted.
an engineer and founder of the Last Beach Cleanup used that figure to calculate the 100 bottles per person fact. Dell said the “most sane way” to deal with the problem is to use less plastic and stop the problem at the source.
Because of recycling industry crises, separating recycling from plastic is not viable. We must stop using so much plastic and put plastic on the industry to reduce their production. Beach cleanups are collecting millions of pounds of plastic from trash and rivers. The majority of items thrown away contain plastic.