10 Facts About Plastic Pollution You Need to Know

Global Citizen
This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
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10 Facts About Plastic Pollution You Absolutely Need to Know

Giving Compass’ Take:

• Seneo Mwamba shares facts that everyday consumers need to know about why the end of plastic use is so vital and how to achieve it. 

• How can you tackle plastic in your community and beyond?

• Learn why reducing plastic pollution isn’t enough to save the ocean. 

Plastic is terrible for the environment. David Attenborough and the Blue Planet II team really brought the issue home — and now, brilliantly, we hear about it all the time.

Countries and cities around the world are banning plastic use left, right, and centre, and the call for the end of single-use plastics is at an all-time high.

Here are some lesser-known facts about plastic you really need to know:

  1. Since the 1950s, around 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced worldwide.
  2. In some parts of the world, using plastic is already illegal.
  3. 73% of beach litter worldwide is plastic.
  4. A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute.
  5. Worldwide, about 2 million plastic bags are used every minute.
  6. 90% of plastic polluting our oceans is carried by just 10 rivers.
  7. Plastic is killing more than 1.1 million seabirds and animals every year.
  8. The average person eats 70,000 microplastics each year.
  9. The average time that a plastic bag is used for is … 12 minutes.
  10. Over the past 50 years, world plastic production has doubled.

Read the full article about plastic pollution facts by Seneo Mwamba at Global Citizen.

Climate is a complex topic, and others found these selections from the Impact Giving archive from Giving Compass to be good resources.

  • This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
    Click here for more.
    Why Smart People Make Dumb Choices

    America’s foundations spend many millions of dollars every year on investment advice. What do they get in return? You read that right: Money that could be spent on charitable programs — to alleviate global poverty, help cure disease, improve education, support research or promote the arts —instead flows into the pockets of well-to-do investment advisors and asset managers who, as a group, generate returns that are below average. This is redistribution in the wrong direction, and why it hasn’t attracted more attention or debate is a mystery. The latest evidence that foundation executives make dumb investment decisions arrived recently with the news that two energy funds managed by a Houston-based private equity firm called EnerVest are on the verge of going bust. Once worth $2 billion, the funds will leave investors “with, at most, pennies for every dollar they invested,” the Wall Street Journal reports [paywall]. That said, the debate between active and passive asset managers remains unsettled. While index funds have outperformed actively-managed portfolios over the last decade, Cambridge Associates, a big investment firm that builds customized portfolios for institutional investors and private clients, published a study last spring saying that this past decade is an anomaly. “We continue to find investments in private equity and hedge funds that we believe have an ability to add value to portfolios over the long term.” Portfolio managers are also sure to argue that their expertise and connections enable them to beat market indices. Read the source article at Nonprofit Chronicles

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