The amount of plastic ending up in the environment doubles every 15 years, a new study has found.
It's led to suggestions the sheer amount of plastic in the fossil record will lead future scientists to say we're living in the early stages of a new era - the plastic age.
"We all learn in school about the stone age, the Bronze Age and Iron Age - is this going to be known as the Plastic Age?" study leader Jennifer Brandon of the University of California, San Diego asked the Guardian.
"It is a scary thing that this is what our generation will be remembered for."
Her team analysed a 2010 core of sediment taken from the seafloor off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, in an area devoid of oxygen so untouched by marine life. It contained material dating back to the mid-1800s.
They found an "exponential increase in plastic deposition from 1945 to 2009", doubling about every 15 years. With plastic production and the world's population only increasing since then, Dr Brandon said there was no reason to think a 2019 sample would have better news.
The rise in plastic in the core almost exactly mirrored the world's exponentially rising annual plastic production, which has also doubled every 15 years or so - with slight drops in the wake of the early 1970s oil crisis and the 2008 global financial crisis.
"I hope our study shows this is a very serious problem."
For example, enough plastic bottles are sold every year that if they were dumped in a pile, they'd be higher than the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building.
Humanity's effect on the Earth's ecosystem has led geologists to propose we're now living in a new age, the Anthropocene. Its exact start date is still being debated - some suggest the start of the Industrial Revolution, others the beginning of agriculture, while a popular proposal narrows it down to a specific day - the first atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945.
Dr Brandon suggests the boom in plastics following World War II adds weight to this latter suggestion.
"This increase in plastic deposition in the post–World War II years can be used as a geological proxy for the Great Acceleration of the Anthropocene in the sedimentary record," the study says.
It was published in journal Science Advances on Thursday (NZ time).
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