No place has escaped the plastic plague

IN THE DEEPEST DIVE in a manned submersible, US explorer Victor Vescovo spotted and video-recorded a plastic bag and a pile of candy wrappers on the seabed. China Daily reporter Zhang Zhouxiang comments:

His discovery of plastic waste 11.2 kilometers below sea level in the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean, the deepest known point in the Earth's oceans, means there is nowhere on this planet plastic waste cannot reach, as it has been found on Mount Qomolangma and in both Arctic and Antarctic waters.

Since the patent for plastics was registered in 1907, 8.3 billion tons of plastic products have already been produced, of which 6.3 billion have been disposed of without processing.