Environmental Health and Protection Commons^™

Plastic Fast, Maureen E. Schlangen

Roesch Library Staff Publications

In the era of Silent Spring, the first Earth Days and the “Keep America Beautiful” campaigns in the 1970s, littering was just the tip of the pollution iceberg. It still is. The bigger problems are demand and production. A June 2018 article in National Geographic found that worldwide, we produce almost 500 million tons of plastic every year — and about 40 percent is tossed after one use. According to the nonprofit Plastic Oceans, more than 8 million tons of plastic go into the oceans each year; production of plastic water bottles alone has grown from 3.8 billion in 1996 …