This week I did a lot of reading on my topic because it overlaps with another homework I'm also researching for. At first I started in the same line as before where I just wanted to show the current quantities of plastic now in the ocean. But after doing more and more research and seeing images like the ones below I changed my mind:
It's true that these images aren't new but I suppose between the over-exposure to them this week plus other things happening in my life the effect was marked. So I decided that I wanted to visualize the quantities of plastic in relation to the animals that it hurts most. How many times the weight of these animals are we putting out there in plastic costing their lives, and very slowly our environment as well?
I looked at the data for all the plastic produced yearly in all sectors but specifically in the packaging sector. From there, I also looked at the amount that goes wasted (which is more than half).
Just from the packaging sector 141 million tons of plastic go to waste every year.
That's 705,000 blue whales (200 tons each)
20,142,857 elephants (7 tons each)
188,000,000 giant sea turtles (0.75 tons each)
564,000,000 giant clams (0.25 tons each)
In this visualization each whale represents 88,125 of it's brethren.
Each elephant represents 1,342,857 of creature's like him that would need to die to get to the amount of plastic we waste.
Each sea turtle represents 4,700,00 that die caught in plastic nets.
Each giant clam represents 23,500,000 of them that live among our trash.
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