The first wholly synthetic plastic was created in 1907, but there are many varieties produced today. Most are fossil fuel based. By the 1950’s and 60’s synthetic plastics had become much more common and widespread in modern life. Plastics have continued to be used for more and more purposes because they have many useful properties, such as being low cost, flexible, moldable into different shapes when heated, capable of being tailored for specific purposes, and lasting for a very long time. This last quality of being long lasting and resistant to being broken-down has proven to be problematic for the environment. It is estimated that a foam plastic cup will take 50 years, a plastic beverage holder will take 400 years, a disposable diaper will take 450 years, and fishing line will take 600 years to degrade. Although synthetic plastics are not biodegradable they do break up into smaller pieces and they undergo polymer degradation through a variety of processes. Plastics have become a large component of human waste products with a 2017 estimate of 6.3 billion tons of waste plastic in our environment worldwide. It’s been estimated that 50 to 80% of marine debris is plastic and there are known to be garbage patches made up largely of plastic is all the large ocean gyres with the largest and most famous known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (see https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/info/patch.html for more information). The plastics found there come in all sizes from lines and nets to six pack rings and plastic bags to microplastics that are making their way into the food web. But there are problems for fish and wildlife species associated with all sizes of plastic marine debris that vary from entanglement, to ingestion, to transport of non-native species. Oregon’s beaches receive their share of plastics washing ashore as small pieces, larger peices as can be seen in the photo above taken during a recent walk on the beach, and also as pieces of plastic line.