26 Apr An Entire Island and Hotel in Croatia Ditches Disposable Plastics!

A huge part of pollution comes from single-use plastics and improperly discarded plastic products. Check out these shocking plastic in our oceans facts from Condor Ferries.

• 300 million tons of plastic gets created yearly, and this weighs the same as the entire human population, and 50% is single-use only.
• An estimated 8 million tons of plastic enters our oceans every year.
• There are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic waste estimated to be in our oceans. 269,000 tons float, 4 billion microfibers per square km dwell below the surface.
• 70% of our debris sinks into the ocean’s ecosystem, 15% floats, and 15% lands on our beaches
• In the past 10 years, we’ve made more plastic than the last century. By 2050, the pollution of fish will be outnumbered by our dumped plastics.
• In various studies, plastics made up 60-90% of the marine pollution found.
• Ocean crusaders estimate there to be 46,000 plastic pieces in our waters per square mile.
• As plastic decomposes over 100’s of years, it breaks into micro pieces and can spread all over the planet.
• Other than incinerated plastics, the entire volume we ever created is still on our planet in some form.

(https://www.condorferries.co.uk/marine-ocean-pollution-statistics-facts)

While these statistics can be depressing, there are businesses and countries making progress to try and reverse the effects of plastic pollution!

Hotel Adriatic in Istria is the first hotel in Croatia to ditch its use of disposable plastics. Examples of how the hotel has completed this are refillable aluminum water bottles, ceramic containers, metal razors, and encourage their guests to shop locally and sustainably. 

Zlarin is the first entire island in Croatia to be free of single-use plastics. The island signed a charter saying its businesses would no longer use single-use plastics. 

While it may not seem much, these are huge steps especially for a small country in taking action against plastic pollution. Hopefully, Croatia’s efforts will inspire other businesses and countries to take action as well!

Featured Image by DarkmoonArt_de from Pixabay