File:Ocean Friendly Restaurants - Surfrider Foundation.jpg

<addthis />

Ocean Friendly Restaurants

Surfrider Foundation

• https://www.surfrider.org/programs/ocean-friendly-restaurants

Plastic pollution is suffocating our ocean and the many animals that call it home. Researchers estimate there are now over 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean with 8.75 million metric tons being added every year. This pollution is impacting our marine ecosystems and wildlife including seabirds, dolphins, fish, turtles, and whales. Plastic fragments are even displacing plankton as the base of the food chain. So what’s the best way to combat this global epidemic facing our ocean? It’s simple: we need to stop the problem at the source! The Surfrider Foundation’s Ocean Friendly Restaurants program does just that. One restaurant, one customer at a time, it increases awareness, drives behavior change, and ultimately creates scalable impact to reduce our plastic footprint.

Researchers estimate there are now over 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean with the number continuing to grow every day.

An estimated 100 billion plastic bags are used ANNUALLY in the United States.​

49.4 billion plastic water bottles were sold in one year’s time with only 31.1% recycled, leaving roughly 34 billion plastic bottles that were littered or went into a landfill in 2015.

Restaurants use an average of 5,800 gallons of water per day

Plastic does not biodegrade so virtually every piece of plastic ever created still exists in some form today!

​ The Ocean Friendly Restaurants program offers restaurants an easy way to show their commitment to making sustainable choices for our ocean.

• http://beachapedia.org/Plastic_Pollution_Facts_and_Figures

• http://www.beachapedia.org/Polystyrene

• http://ecocycle.org/bestrawfree/faqs

• https://www.swfwmd.state.fl.us/conservation/waterwork/checklist-restaurant.html

~