Monday statistics: the environmental problems caused by plastics and Earth Day in 2024

It's astonishing to think that two unlikely nonpartisan American politicians, Republican U.S. Representative Pete McCloskey of California and Democratic U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, came up with the idea and started the yearly celebration of Earth Day, which is being observed for the 55th time today.

The Earth Day website's "history" section serves as a potent reminder of both how different that era was from our own in many ways—the anti-Vietnam War movement, for example, played a key role in the event's beginning—and how similar our two eras are in other ways, too—as an era beset by issues such as "oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness and the extinction of wildlife" and one in which young people were deeply concerned about their future well-being.

Senator Nelson was motivated to combine the fervor of student anti-war demonstrations with the growing public awareness of air and water pollution, having been inspired by the student anti-war movement. Sen. Nelson convinced Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey to co-chair the teach-in on college campuses when he presented the proposal to the national media.

In order to maximize student involvement, Nelson enlisted the help of young activist Denis Hayes to plan the campus teach-ins and spread the idea to a larger audience. They decided to hold the event on April 22, a weekday that falls between Spring Break and Final Exams.

By the time of the movement's launch on April 22, 1970, "20 million Americans — at the time, 10% of the total population of the United States — [took to] the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate against the impacts of 150 years of industrial development which had left a growing legacy of serious human health impacts," according to the website. Hayes and the team he assembled led the movement to success.

Additionally, the occasion contributed right away to a rush of progressive national policy changes in Washington during the administration of Republican Richard Nixon:

The United States Environmental Protection Agency was established by the end of 1970 as a result of the first Earth Day, and other groundbreaking environmental laws, such as the Clean Air Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the National Environmental Education Act, were also passed. Congress enacted the Clean Water Act two years later.

The terrible threat posed by environmental degradation is more greater now than it was in 1970, as people celebrate Earth Day 2024 all across the planet. The current generation has its work cut out for it when it comes to issues like the climate emergency and the increasingly extreme weather patterns it is causing, sea level rise and desertification, the extinction of species worldwide, water and air pollution, and the proliferation of dangerous "forever chemicals" like PFAS.

In 2024, the Earth Day website will focus particularly on two pressing issues: the global plastic crisis and the "60X40 movement," which aims to cut plastic production worldwide by 60% by that year.

Listed below are a few of the crucial details found:


The quantity of plastic manufactured since its introduction in 1950, measured in tons: 9.1 billion.

The proportion of plastic ever made (79) that is still in landfills or the environment

50 billion plastic water bottles are bought annually by Americans, or around 156 bottles per person.

An estimated 5 trillion plastic bags are used annually worldwide.

The amount of Styrofoam coffee cups that Americans discard annually is 25 billion.

14 million tons of plastic are dumped into the world's seas annually, with a large portion of that trash being hazardous microplastics.

The estimated tonnage of plastic in the world's oceans right now is between 75 and 199 million.


The year 2050 is predicted to come when the weight of all plastic in the world's oceans is expected to surpass that of all fish.

The average annual amount of microplastic particles that each American consumes from their drinking water source is about 70,000.

The quantity of plastic pollution that contaminates land and waterways and enters the food chain when animals inadvertently eat it is up to 23 times higher than that of marine plastic pollution.

The projected removal of microplastics from drinking water using biologically-active slow sand filters, which are used in some water treatment plants for decontamination, is 99.9%.

By 2040, the amount of plastic that enters the ocean each year may be decreased by 80% by using current methods to cut back on single-use plastic use and switching to more environmentally friendly options.