The suggestion that we are essentially in a 'new' Geological era, dominated by humans and their waste has been given enormous support by a study looking at washed up plastics on Henderson island in the Pitcairns of the South Pacific (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/15/38-million-pieces-of-plastic-waste-found-on-uninhabited-south-pacific-island). It has been estimated that this tiny, uninhabited atoll has circa 38 million pieces of plastic on its shores and buried in its sands (remarkably, making it one of the most polluted places on the planet). This means that almost 18 tonnes of this human-generated waste has arrived by wave action, endangering habitats and species. As it takes hundreds of years for the plastics to biodegrade, only waste removal exercises will reduce it (and this is pointless if more material simply washes up to replace it). Those humans are messy animals!
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