If you pulled 1,000 litres (264 gallons) of water out of the ocean, how many small bits of plastic would you expect to find? Ten pieces? One hundred pieces? How about 8.3 million pieces of what researchers call “mini-microplastic.” Such is the finding of an alarming new study.
There’s a chance you had never heard of Ring cameras before Amazon bought the company for as much as $US1.8 ($3) billion last year. It’s possible that Ring still wasn’t on your radar earlier this year, when reports emerged that the home security giant had partnered with scores of U.S. police departments, funnelling videos and user data in some dystopian effort to make a profit by fighting crime and eradicating privacy. But there’s a good chance that you’re going to see a Ring video doorbell on sale—possibly bundled with an Amazon Echo—these holidays.