Plastic Bottles
&
Ocean Pollution

Oceans make up
97% of Earth’s water

Oceans feed us and sustain us

Most of the oxygen in our
atmosphere is generated by the sea

Oceans drive our
climate and weather

Our very lives depend on the ocean

Yet we’re poisoning the ocean with
hundreds of millions of tons of plastic

Over 2 million plastic beverage
bottles are used every 5 minutes
in the U.S.

As little asas
As little 10%
of plastic bottles
10% of
are recycled
plastic
bottles are
recycled

The rest end up in landfills
or in our oceans

There is a garbage patch twice the
size of Texas in the North Pacific

100 million marine mammals and
turtles in the north Pacific are killed
every year by plastic in the ocean

70-100% of North Pacific sea birds
are affected by eating plastic. This
albatross starved to death because it
ate too much plastic trash.

Plastic fragments concentrate
pollutants up to one million times
ambient levels in sea water - making
ingested plastic into poison pills

So what?
Think the ocean isn’t important?

Imagine Earth without it

Plastic is killing the ocean

Plastic is poisoning the fish you eat

The fish you eat have likely ingested
contaminated plastic.
Nature can no longer produce
organic fish in the ocean.

What can YOU do?

Stop using
plastic
beverage
bottles!

8.8 billion gallons of bottled water
were consumed in the U.S. in 2007

That’s 232 16 oz. bottles
per person a year

Only a small
fraction
are recycled

Up to 63.4 BILLION plastic bottles
are dumped into landfills and the
ocean a year

That’s 173,589,041
bottles every day

120,548
plastic bottles
end up in
landfills or
the ocean
every minute

THE
CHALLENGE
Use reusable
water bottles
filled with
filtered tap
water

If each person in the U.S. replaced
their disposable bottled water
with a reusable container filled with
tap water, we’d keep BILLIONS of
plastic water bottles out of the ocean

It’s easy to do
It will help save the ocean
It will save you money

Where to learn more
http://savetheocean.wordpress.com
http://www.rozsavage.com/index.php/environment/pacific-stage-1-plastic-pollution
http://www.filterforgood.com/
http://www.algalita.org/
http://www.healthebay.org

Photo Credits
Slide 1: Doug James, Cornell University
Slide 2: NASA
Slide 3: NOAA
Slide 4: stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu
Slide 5: Environment Canada Satellite Image
Slide 6: stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu
Slide 7: Heal The Bay, www.healthebay.org
Slide 8: Doug James, Cornell University
Slide 9: Jeff Bennett, DigitalSplashMedia
Slide 10: stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu
Slide 11: Jeff Bennett, DigitalSplashMedia
Slide 12: stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu
Slide 13: www.sanrafaelvolunteers.org
Slide 14: Algalita Marine Research Foundation, www.algalita.org
Slide 15: stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu
Slide 16: NASA
Slide 17: stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu
Slide 18: Adam Laverty, www.endoverfishing.org
Slide 19: NOAA
Slide 20: stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu
Slide 21: Jeff Bennett, DigitalSplashMedia
Slide 22: sstock.xchng, www.sxc.hu
Slide 23: stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu
Slide 24: stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu
Slide 25: Doug James, Cornell University
Slide 26: stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu
Slide 27: stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu
Slide 28: stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu
Slide 29: Jeff Bennett, DigitalSplashMedia
Slide 30: stock.xchng, www.sxc.hu

an online visual explanation by
www.DigitalSplashMedia.com