According to Science magazine, about 8 million metric tons of land-based plastic, including plastic straws, ends up in the world’s oceans each year. This is equivalent to five grocery bags of plastic on every foot of coastline around the world. More than a quarter of ocean plastic likely originates from only 10 rivers, eight of them in Asia. Marine life is vulnerable to the health risks posed by plastic debris. The majority of ocean plastic ends up in gyres, systems of circular ocean currents. The largest gyre is home to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area estimated by some to be three times the size of California, located halfway between Hawaii and California in the Pacific Ocean.
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