Australian Museum

Mark McGrouther
Collection Manager, Ichthyology

Amanda Hay
Technical Officer, Ichthyology

We have all heard that discarding plastic waste at sea can lead to problems. The images to the right speak for themslelves.

Parrys Raines wrote the following points in her blog post Interesting plastic facts.

Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1 million sea creatures every year.
An estimated 14 billion pounds of trash, much of it plastic is dumped in the world's oceans every year.
13 billion plastic bags are issued each year -an average of 300 per adult per 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.
Last but not least but certainly the most shocking is that nearly every piece of plastic ever made still exists today.

Mark McGrouther , Collection Manager, Ichthyology
Last Updated: 10 March 2011

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