Four hundred years is about how long the word “plastic” has been in the English vocabulary, deriving from the Greek plastikos, meaning “able to be molded.” Except modern plastics are built to be durable and have become positively unyielding. And we keep making more of the stuff: 115 million metric tons a year. Light though plastic is, that’s the equivalent of the weight of 347 Empire State Buildings. Ten percent wends its way to sea. Twenty percent of what gets to sea has been tossed off ships and oil rigs; the rest comes via floods and sewage, and much of that from ever-profligate Americans, who produce a record-setting 240 pounds of plastic per person per year.—Mother Jones
