U.S. Merchant shipping fleet dumps 14 billion pounds of garbage in our oceans every year.

In 1975, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that 14 billion pounds of garbage was being dumped into the ocean every year. That’s more than 1.5 million pounds per hour. More than 85% of this trash was estimated to come from the world’s merchant shipping fleet in the form of cargo-associated wastes. According to the Academy, the United States could be the source of approximately one third of this ocean pollution.”

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Photo/article credit to

https://phys.org/news/2018-03-pacific-plastic-dump-larger.html

https://www.whoi.edu/science/B/people/kamaral/plasticsarticle.html