PAKISTAN'S PLASTIC POLLUTION

RAPID INCREASE in plastic pollution ruining wildlife, marine ecology in Pakistan.

Conservationists and experts have warned that the use of plastic is increasing in the country and is posing serious serious threats to freshwater and marine ecology.

They were addressing an event held to celebrate Earth Day, which is being observed globally on April 22 organized by WWF-Pakistan in collaboration with Karachi University [KU] at the Institute of Environmental Science on Friday.

''Plastic products take hundreds of years to decompose as they have strong chemical bonds that simply make them last longer.

The simplest plastic normally used in grocery store bags take  at  least 100 years to break down while the complex ones take between 100 to 600 years or even last beyond that to decompose,'' said experts. adding-

That during this period, these plastics products keep on damaging the environment until they are completely decomposed.

The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 was observed in the wake of of the 1969  oil  spill  in Santa Barbara, California.

The event mobilised 20 million Americans from all walks of life and is widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement.

In the last five decades, the human impact on ocean has reaching catastrophic levels as use of plastic waste a destructive impact on marine ecology.

According to the Earth Day Network, it's the world's largest recruiter to the environmental movement, working with more than  50,000 partners in nearly 195 countries to build environmental-democracy, and-

More than  1 billion  people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world.