Pollution because of the production and usage of plastics is a serious problem and efforts need to be taken to help curtail it. To create awareness for the same, National Geographic, in their June Issue, discussed the menace.
On its cover page, they illustrated a plastic bag drowning in water with the caption “Planet or Plastic?”
However, the issue came under fire when Luiz Rocha, a Twitter user tweeted a picture of the magazine, calling out their hypocrisy.
Humanity in a nutshell, the National Geographic magazine about ocean plastic pollution comes wrapped in a plastic bag inside another plastic bag.Luiz Rocha on Twitter
The tweet caught on and the picture went viral with many calling out the company and sparking further debate, to which, Nat Geo responded with this tweet.
Despite acknowledging the concern, Tweeple did not let Nat Geo get off scot-free. They tweeted instances of receiving the magazine wrapped in a plastic bag.
The amount of plastic produced in a year is roughly the same as the entire weight of humanity!
500 million plastic bags are used everyday in America alone, 1 million plastic bottles are bought every minute around the world, and 8 million metric tons of plastic winds up in the ocean each year, according to earthday.org.
National Geographic definitely has a lot to answer for.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)