Ocean garbage

FTO is officially three years old on August 16th. Since our launch in 2019, we’ve achieved more impact than we ever thought possible thanks to YOU, the FTO community! Today we’re sharing important impact milestones and fun stats from the last 3 years to help celebrate our anniversary.

This needs to stop. Scientists estimate that there are 5.25 trillion bits of plastic debris in the oceans worldwide — that's more plastic pieces than stars in our galaxy! Awareness is the first step of change.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch covers an area twice the size of Texas or three times the size of France.

A non-profit organization has scraped more than 40 tons of fishing nets and consumer plastics from a region of the Pacific that's home to a massive debris field known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

And that's a highly conservative estimate, say scientists.

Efforts are under way to clear the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Is that really a good idea, asks Andrew Kersley

Right now, there are 150 million metric tons of plastic in our oceans—and we're releasing an additional 8 million metric tons each year. Plastic pollution exists almost everywhere in the ocean, from the remote seas of the Arctic to the floor of the deep sea. Luckily, we can take small steps in our everyday lives to reduce plastic waste and make a big impact on the environment. Photo credit © Shutterstock / Shane Gross / WWF

Every 60 seconds a rubbish truck of plastic is dumped in the ocean. We want to help prevent this by saving ocean-bound plastic with every product purchased through our partners Greenspark and Plastic Bank.

The Ocean Cleanup has been focusing its efforts on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an enormous collection of marine debris in the North Pacific.