Available on Good Magazine, this info graphic, designed by Jacob Magraw-Mickelson gives you a snapshot of how the population is rapidly increasing the pollution in the off-shore garbage dumps.
Some figures presented in the drawing include:
- 100 billion pounds of plastic is used each year, with 10 percent of it ending up in the ocean. Approximately 70 percent sinks, but the other 30 percent is carried by the ocean currents on the surface.
- In every square mile of ocean, nearly 50,000 pieces of plastic floats.
- Plastic particles never break down completely, although some is degraded into particles aquatic organisms digest.
- By some estimates, the size of the garbage patch ranges from 250,000 square miles (the size of Texas) to 6 million square miles, or 10% of the total size of the Pacific Ocean.
