Plastic in 99% of seabirds by 2050

Australian researchers predicted that plastic ingestion will affect 99 percent of the world's seabird species by 2050. They pointed out that plastic has been increasingly common in seabird's stomachs since the 1960s. Less than 5 percent of individual seabirds were found to have plastic in their stomachs in 1960, however, this proportion hit 80 percent by 2010. Scientists estimate that 90 percent of all seabirds alive today have eaten plastic of some kind. This includes bags, bottle caps, and plastic fibers from synthetic clothes, which have been washed out into the ocean from urban rivers, sewers and waste deposits.