Straw smog: scientists concerned about epic plastic pollution

Cities and nations are considering banning plastic straws and stirrers to try to address the world’s plastic pollution problem. The problem is so large, though, that scientists say it is not enough.

Australian scientists Denise Hardesty and Chris Wilcox estimate, using rubbish collected on US coastlines during clean-ups over five years, that there are nearly 7.5 million plastic straws lying around America’s shorelines. They say that means 437 million to 8.3 billion plastic straws are on the entire world’s coastlines.

But that huge number suddenly seems small when you look at all the plastic rubbish bobbing around oceans. University of Georgia environmental engineering professor Jenna Jambeck calculates that nearly 9 million tons end up in the world’s oceans and coastlines each year, as of 2010, according to her 2015 study in the journal Science.

That is just in and near oceans. Each year more than 35 million tonnes of plastic pollution are produced and about a quarter of that ends up around the water.

“For every pound (0.45kg) of tuna we’re taking out of the ocean, we’re putting two pounds of plastic in the ocean,” said ocean scientist Sherry Lippiatt, California regional coordinator for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s marine debris programme.