Plastic bottles by the trillion: Stark message in a water bottle

Every now and then, a phrase or a piece of data has an impact that far outweighs its immediate import.

A statistic, a sliver of information that, by itself, means only so much can show how very self-destructive we can be or how very little we seem to learn from the excesses of the past.

The sobering warning — “the last generation to eat wild fish from the sea are already alive” — is one.