The news about plastic in the ocean is unrelentingly bad, and although it’s difficult not to become overwhelmed by the scale of the problem, there are developments afoot to address it.When it comes to single use plastics, the numbers are staggering: 500 million single-use straws are used and discarded each day and 100 billion plastic bags are used annually in the United States alone. Given that plastic beverage bottles take 450 to 1,000 years to decompose (if at all), and plastic bags take approximately 1,000 years, it’s no surprise to hear the largest area of plastic debris in the ocean is estimated to be 3.8 million m² (10 million km²) in size.Read more of my latest article for Scuba Diver Life here: http://scubadiverlife.com/2016/05/15/13428/