According to The Washington Post, by 2050 there will be more plastic water bottles in the ocean than fish. Plastic Water bottles wash up on urban beaches, are tossed about in waves, and transported across incredible distances before arriving back on the land. They have been found in stomachs of more than half of the world’s sea turtles and almost all of its marine birds.

If we keep producing and failing to properly dispose of plastics at predicted rates, plastics in the ocean will outweigh fish. World-wide use of plastic has increased 20-fold in the past 50 years. It is expected to double in the next 20 years. By 2050, we will be making more than three times as much plastic stuff as we did in 2014, according to The Washington Post.

According to NationalGeographic, Ocean plastics have turned up everywhere. It has been found in the deep sea and buried in the Arctic ice. It has also been ingested with dire consequences by some 700 species of marine wildlife. The United States is the top 20th country in the world that is generating the greatest amount of ocean-bound trash. The U.S. made the list for two reasons: it has a large dense coastal population, and as a wealthy nation, is a large consumer of products.

We should be doing a lot more to prevent our water bottles from going into the ocean and ruining a habitat for fish. Not only are we affecting fish, we are affecting the animals who consume those fish. Especially since we live in a dry, hot state, we go through endless supplies of water bottles daily. It is not that hard to go and reuse a water bottle.  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!