Did you know these scary plastic waste facts?

The leaves are falling, the air is cooling, the moon is bright — it’s the season of ghosts, ghouls, and other Halloween creatures of the night.

But one of the spookiest monsters of all is lurking all around us. It follows us nearly everywhere we go. It might even have invaded our bodies.

It comes in every shape and size. It can even change its form.

What is this Halloween horror’s identity? It’s plastic — and all the waste and pollution plastic products become.

Did you know these spooky plastic facts?

1. You can’t hide … plastic is everywhere.

We use a ton of plastic stuff every day, most of which ends up getting thrown away. But more often than not, the plastic we put into the trash can or recycling bin escapes from the grave to haunt us.

Discarded plastic travels from landfills and litter to streams and rivers, and finally into the ocean. A dump truck’s worth of plastic enters the ocean every single minute.

And it spreads far and wide: Researchers spotted a plastic bag floating at the deepest part of the sea, in the Mariana Trench. Tiny plastic particles have also been found near the peak of Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world.

2. Plastic never dies.

Nearly every piece of plastic that has ever been manufactured is still out there somewhere, in some form or another.

Its durability is part of what makes plastic such an appealing material to manufacture things out of — but it has a dark side. In a landfill or out in the environment, some plastic can take centuries to significantly degrade.

Even when plastic pollution starts to break down, it doesn’t vanish. It just changes form into something even more sinister: Microplastics. These tiny plastic particles can spread far and wide, and may even pose a threat to our health.

3. There’s plastic in the human body.

Plastic is so common, and its tiny particles so insidious, that it’s even making its way into our bodies. We each consume up to a credit card’s worth of plastic every week, and scientists are still working today to discover more about the impact microplastics in the body may have on our health.

Plastic pollution is a crisis — but don’t be scared.

With your support, PIRG is working hard to ban the worst forms of plastic and stop the waste and pollution that threatens our health. Thanks in part to our years of advocacy and people like you making your voices heard, one-third of Americans now live in a state with a ban on some types of single-use plastics.

And you can use these tips to help reduce the plastic waste in your own Halloween celebrations this year: