When something is "thrown away" it doesn't necessarily go away it just goes some other place. The following post was published May 23, 2016 at Vox.com:
There are 5 trillion pieces of plastic floating in our oceans. This map shows you where.The plastic in our oceans weighs the equivalent of 38,000 elephants, and, laid end-to-end, could circle the Earth 425 times.