How much do plastic straws contribute to pollution?

Countries and cities are taking a look at banning stirrers and straws in hopes of fixing the world contamination issue. The issue is so big, however, that scientists state that is not enough.

Australian scientists Denise Hardesty and Chris Wilcox quote, with garbage accumulated on U.S. coastlines throughout cleanups more than five decades, there are almost 7.5 million plastic straws lying about America's shorelines. They guess this implies 437 million to 8.3 billion plastic straws have been around the whole planet's coastlines.

But that number that is massive looks small once you look at of the garbage. University of Georgia ecological engineering scientist Jenna Jambeck computes that almost 9 million tons (8 billion metric tons) wind up in the planet's oceans and coastlines every calendar year, according to 2010, based on her 2015 research from the journal Science.

That in and close seas. Each year over 35 million tons (31.9 million metric tons) of plastic contamination are made around Earth and approximately a quarter of the ends up round the water.

"For each pound of tuna we are taking from the sea, we are placing two lbs of plastic from the sea," says sea scientist Sherry Lippiatt, California regional planner for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's marine debris plan.

While on a research project in Costa Rica, Nathan J. Robinson removed a 10 cm (4 in) plastic straw that was entirely embedded into the nostril of an olive ridley sea turtle. Lamentably, this is a consequence of the world of single-use, non-biodegradable plastic that we currently live in.