Health Science Supplementary Analysis

Plastic is a huge problem to the Earth’s ecosystem, including to the marine wildlife of the oceans. It gets into our oceans in large quantities, and they pile up to a point they become an “island of plastic.” Some of which are estimated to be as big as a few million square miles, the biggest being in the Pacific ocean. This could result in environmental issues that could harm the ecosystems of the oceans. It would be eaten in small quantities by fish and by birds, which could cause many health problems that could lead to death. This is a problem that will only lead us to think more critically the waste we produce as humans. In only of a short time span of 35 years, was the oceans transformed into a landfill of plastic.

In an article written by Adam Vaughn for The Guardian, the issue of marine debris is briefly addressed while a solution to the issue is analyzed. Marine debris can be commonly known as plastics in the ocean, and Vaughn’s article analyzes biodegradable plastics. While this essay will not analyze biodegradable plastics, solutions to the issue are an important part of creating a picture of the issue at hand. Marine debris, or plastic in the ocean, is an issue in consequence to its negative environmental impact. It is not common for this negative environmental impact to be argued against. It is more common for this negative environmental impact to be ignored for the sake of human convenience. In one perspective

I believe that self-control is a very important characteristic of a moral life because it makes our actions, most likely, come out with a moral outcome. Let’s say that you are lying on the beach and you spot someone drowning in the water. What do you do? If you apply self-control and Virtue or Kantian ethics, you can perform the action.

Self-control “plays a role in what you believe every bit as much as it does in what you decide to do.” (Churchland, 194) In this sense self-control could be described as what people confuse as free will. An example would be the fact that we may not have the free will to choose what we crave, sometimes we just have an urge to eat junk food due to biological factors, however we can exhibit self control and resist eating the junk food. In Churchland’s article she discusses how we learn self control over time, that when a person is young they spend years learning right and wrong, and how to execute self control in situations. As people grow older they use these lessons and reflect on them to understand how to act in situations. This makes it easier for a person to make their own decisions when it comes down to it.

Pollution of the ocean is widely seen all around. The litter comes in so many very different forms that are almost terrifying. It ranges from a cigarette to a 4,000-pound fishing net (Franc, 2013). Medical waste such as needles were even noticed in New York and New Jersey in 1988. The world’s merchant shipping fleet in 1975 was blamed for 85% of 14 billion pounds of garbage dumped into the sea (Amaral, n.d.). Out of all of the garbage and waste in the ocean it is said that more than 80% of the garbage in the ocean comes from land alone (Mosbergen, 2017). In just one hour, nine minutes, and 44 seconds, a very large number of 2,877,783 pounds of plastic has entered the ocean (Leeson & Elliot, 2016). Today after all of the dumping that goes on there are over 25 trillion pieces of plastic inside of the ocean. While that is a large number, only 269,000 tons can be seen afloat the water (“Ocean Pollution: 14 Facts that will Blow Your Mind,” 2017). The easier way of explaining just how much waste enters our ocean would be just to say “too much,” but to be exact, in 2007 2.12 billion tons of garbage enter the ocean and just three years later in 2010, 215 million metric tons of plastic entered the ocean (Lonne, 2016). In 2006 the United Nations Environment Program did an experiment on how much plastic there was every square mile of the ocean. They ended up estimating about 46,000 pieces of plastic every square mile (“Facts and Figures on Marine Pollution,” 2017). In the Northern Pacific Ocean lies the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is said to be about seven million square miles (“Marine Debris Impacts,” n.d.). Plastic accounts for about 70% of all the litter in the ocean and can take a very short time or a very long time

Many of us think that there is a simple solution to ocean pollution, that solution being recycling. We don’t think that recycling is difficult, or would take much effort, so we often overlook it. Unfortunately, it takes more work than we think, and out of the 33.6 million tons of plastic we discard each year, less than 8% is actually recycled (“What Happens To All That Plastic?” Cho, Renee, http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu). That means that we throw about 30 million tons of plastic into the ocean and landfills every single year, and that number is bound to increase, as it is such a huge part of our daily lives. In our world, we are practically surrounded by plastic, when you think about it. Every day, many of us use grocery bags, bottles, straws, containers, toys, and that list has continued to grow. When we use plastic products, we aren’t thinking about the long term problem of what happens to it, or where it ends up; and that just goes to show how much plastic has really taken over our lives. A large quantity of the plastic that we use we only use once and then throw away, leading to a surplus of trash in the oceans. All of that trash causes huge problems for

In the article When the Mermaids Cry” The Great Plastic Tide by Claire Le Guern Lytle, she wrote “For more than 50 years, global production and consumption of plastics have continued to rise. An estimated 299 million tons of plastics were produced in 2013, representing a 4 percent increase over 2012, and confirming and upward trend over the past years” This means that more and more trash is added to the 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic floating in the ocean. Almost everything around us is made out of plastic, this is later misused and ending in the wrong place. The Center for Biological Diversity wrote “In the first decade of this century, we made more plastic than all the plastic in history up to the year 2000. And every year, billions of pounds of plastic end up in the world’s oceans. Most ocean pollution starts out on land and is carried by wind and rain to the sea. Once in the water, there is a near-continuous accumulation of waste.” Our plastic is misplaced and it escalates from there. However, plastic pollution hurts us as well. “Trash in the water compromises the health of humans, wildlife and the livelihoods that depend on a healthy ocean;” wrote a non-profit group called Ocean Conservation. If our oceans are covered in trash, everyone that relies on the ocean is going to suffer. The effect is not just in our health, it also affects our economy. Ocean Conservation also

Recycling and going green has been at the forefront of everyone's mind for the last 10 years. It has become a major concern to able to preserve the planet and reverse some of the damage that society has been inflicting over the last two hundred years. Everyone's concerned with emissions and electric cars but the world is in fact over two-thirds water. So naturally what society should be concerned about should be the oceans in the pollution and negative human impact that people have placed on them. Part of the problem as an initial estimate of the amount of plastic is not accurate. Not to mention incredible environmental and ecological effects the plastic has on marine life. Ocean plastic has reached a critical level where human intervention needs to take place.

In the National Geographic article “Eight Million Tons of Plastic Dumped in Ocean Every Year”, author Laura Parker expresses how violent the simple act of dumping trash into the ocean really turns out to be. This article goes into depth telling exactly what plastics pollution is causing, where it’s mostly coming from, and what you can do to decrease this problem and help save both our planet and ocean wildlife.

Trying to narrow down a topic to write about is hard for me, I’m unable to decide on a topic like others can because I tend to overthink things especially when the most important

Plastic in the Oceans: Having been to the Centers for Disease Control’s David J. Sencer Museum this past year, I was able to see the exhibition GYRE: The Plastic Ocean. The ocean has become littered with enormous amounts of plastic over the years and, in some places, entire islands can be found entirely composed of discarded or lost plastic objects. The sheer volume of new and current information currently being put forth on this topic makes it an excellent one for research.

Starting a piece of writing has always been tough for me. There are times when I have spent an hour trying to figure out how I should start my writing. Now that's partly because of procrastination but main due to the fact that the intro to any piece is writing, in my opinion, is the most important aspect of any form of writing.

“If we stick to this trajectory, Earth's oceans will have more plastic in them than fish by 2050.” Our ocean is in danger and we have to start helping so that we can still enjoy the ocean in our future. There are many ways we can help. We can help by picking up beaches and keeping them clean when we visit them, using less plastic products, and we can support organizations that help out water even if we do not live in places that have access to the water. If we help out our ocean it will not only help out us but also help out oceanic animals.

The earth’s oceans take up roughly three fourths of the planet’s surface area and hold roughly 97 percent of all water on earth (Silverman). It is important that people make sure that the oceans are kept clean because the ocean contains many essential elements for the survival of both humans and animals. A rising problem that is not often brought up is the increasing amounts of man-made debris, especially plastic, that are accumulating in these waters that is slowly effecting the oceans ecosystem as well as the health of humans. Some may argue that the plastics have little effect on the environment but the facts show that this is not the case. The amount of ocean debris has increased

Over the few years, humans have discarded millions of tons of garbage into the oceans. Ever wonder where the cup you threw out this morning will end up? Or the plastic spoon you used for lunch? How about the cap of a water bottle? The calamitous plastic ends up in the water, taking thousands of years to decompose. The consumption of plastic by the marine life is perilous and the leading cause of death for life on shore.