Article

Close up — An ocean of plastics

Change language

Bulgarian (bg)
Czech (cs)
German (de)
English (en)
Spanish (es)
French (fr)
Croatian (hr)
Hungarian (hu)
Italian (it)
Polish (pl)
Portuguese (pt)
Slovak (sk)
Swedish (sv)
Turkish (tr)

Article Published 30 Aug 2018 Last modified 29 Aug 2023

5 min read

Photo: © Alex Marttunen, WaterPIX / EEA

Mass-produced plastics were introduced around the middle of the last century as a miracle material — light, mouldable, durable and strong. Since then, the production of plastics has increased rapidly, bringing many benefits to society. Now, some 70 years later, annual plastics production is more than 300 million tonnes, and we have begun to understand the true legacy of these products: they never fully ‘disappear’ from the environment.