SCIENTISTS say that even if we stopped dumping plastics in the ocean, plastic would still be washing ashore 100 years from now.

A lot of plastic has been dumped since the late 1940s, and some can take several hundred years to break down.

Since 1987, it has been illegal to throw plastic overboard within US coastal waters. Coastal waters are anywhere less than 320 kilometres offshore. However, the law is hard to enforce.