By Doug Woodring
- Published on February 24, 2015 by South China Morning Post
(SCMP) -- Some 8 million tonnes of plastic waste makes its way into our oceans every year, according to recent reports. That is the same as placing five garbage bags of trash on every foot of the coastline on our planet. And that is just plastic.
To put the World Bank's estimates of global municipal solid waste production into perspective, it would be like covering all of California in waste to a depth of almost 10 metres each year. And the scary fact is that some predict this figure will double within 15 years, as population growth and consumption take their toll on our resources.
So, it is worth asking, is our waste footprint a bigger concern than climate change? In the scheme of long-term impact, it's hard to say, but what is not hard to say is that most of our communities lack the waste management and recycling infrastructure to keep waste from creating problems in our societies and environment.
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