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Marine plastics will outweigh the total mass of fish in the world's oceans in the coming decades, according to an environmental report that calls for a multilateral plastics treaty to stem the tide of global pollution.
By 2025, there will be 250 million metric tons of plastic in the oceans, said the United Kingdom-based Environmental Investigations Agency, or EIA. It said the figure will rise to around 700 million tons by 2040, which is equal to the estimated weight of all the fish in the oceans. |
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By 2050, the amount of plastic "will far exceed" the weight of all fish in every ocean, the EIA said.
Humankind's "addiction to plastic" and failure to prevent the material from contaminating the food chain directly undermines human health, drives biodiversity loss, exacerbates climate change, and risks "generating large-scale harmful environmental changes", the agency said.
EIA ocean campaigner Tom Gammage said that if the "tidal wave of pollution continues unchecked", plastic discharges into the oceans alone will triple by 2040, in line with growing plastics production. |
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