Each year over 300 million tonnes of plastic is produced globally. Over 10% of this will end up in the sea. Divers and sub-mariners searching the seabed are invariably confronted with a junkyard of human debris, most of which is plastic of one kind or another. There are worries that what can be seen on the surface of the water may only be a fraction, as over 70% of ocean debris sinks below the surface. Huge rubbish dumps may be building up on the ocean floor.
Even remote areas of the world like New Zealand are not free of this pollution, because of major polluters such as Indonesia and Thailand and the work of ocean currents. This is an environmental disaster in the making.
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