Oooh, pretty isn’t it. Just kidding, that’s a load of trash.

“The world’s oceans will be filled with more plastic mass than fish mass by 2050.” – The World Economic Forum (Article: http://time.com/4186250/ocean-plastic-fish/)

Wow, that’s a pretty staggering statistic isn’t it? I can’t even imagine what it would be like for our oceans to be filled with more plastic than fish.

In our sustainability marketing class, it’s interesting to learn more about the impact of the business practices and lifestyles that we currently have on our environment. We learn about both extreme ends of the spectrum in which there are companies that seem like they don’t care about the environment at all and produce tons of greenhouse gases, while there are people who try to minimize their environmental footprint as much as possible by doing things like pursuing zero waste lifestyles.

Anyways, after some searching online, I found out more about ocean plastic at plasticoceans.net. The site provides some pretty compelling facts about the extent of the damage that our plastic waste is doing to the oceans, such as the environmental, human, and economic impacts.

And…here are some lovely photos from Google showing the extent of the ocean plastic conundrum:

I don’t know about you, but honestly, these photos make me never want to throw anything away or litter ever again. Perhaps this is how Ray Anderson felt when he had that eureka moment realizing that Interface could not continue down its current path.

Having watched Finding Nemo and Planet Earth, this makes me think of all those wonderful sea creatures and cute fish and realizing that they are dying out or suffering because of all the ocean plastic that we’re contributing to the environment. It’s quite tragic really.

I mean, do all these products that we’re consuming even need all of this plastic packaging? I ordered some stuff from Amazon the other day and there was bubble wrap on top of plastic wrap on top of more plastic wrap until finally there’s the product I ordered.

We’re pretty much screwing up the Earth for the next generation and the time to start doing something about it is now. Hopefully someday we can live in a society that recycles more than we throw things away. What do you think about all of this? Leave your comments below!