It’s no secret that plastic is terrible for the environment, we hear about it all the time and it has been reiterated over and over again by policy makers, scientists and the likes of David Attenborough.

But do you know just how bad the plastic pollution problem is?

According to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), 300 million tonnes of plastic is produced every year, and not all of it is recycled. To put that into perspective, that’s equivalent to the weight of the entire human population.

It is also up to us as consumers to understand the impact that our plastic consumption is having on the environment. Get clued up with these lesser-known facts about plastic that you really need to know.

  1. Only 9% of all plastic produced is recycled
  2. A whopping 2 million plastic bags are used every minute worldwide
  3. Single-use plastics are illegal in some parts of the world
  4. Every minute of every day a truckload of plastic is dumped into the ocean
  5. 73% of beach litter worldwide is plastic
  6. One million plastic bottles are bought every minute
  7. There could be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050
  8. Up to 95% of plastic polluting oceans is carried by 10 rivers
  9. 99% of seabirds will be eating plastic by 2050
  10. The average person eats 70,000 microplastics each year
  11. The average time that a plastic bag is used is just 12 minutes
  12. Over the past 50 years, world plastic production has doubled

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