According to the study from researchers of Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Imperial College London, majority of the world’s seabirds have plastic in their gut. In 1960, less than five percent of seabirds had plastic in their stomachs. Now the number has increased to 60%. If this continues, by 2050, 99% of sea birds will have plastic in their stomachs.

The scientists estimate that 90 per cent of all seabirds alive today have eaten plastic of some kind. This includes bags, bottle caps, and plastic fibres from synthetic clothes, which have washed out into the ocean from urban rivers, sewers and waste deposits. Birds mistake the brightly colored items for food, or swallow them by accident, and this causes gut impaction, weight loss and sometimes even death.

The researchers found plastics will have the greatest impact on wildlife where they gather in the Southern Ocean, in a band around the southern edges of Australia, South Africa and South America.

Efforts to reduce plastics losses into the environment in Europe resulted in measurable changes in plastic in seabird stomachs with less than a decade. This improvements in basic waste management can reduce plastic in the environment in a really short time.

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