Join The Plastic Pollution Coalition

In conclusion, it should have been learned that the issue of plastic pollution has become ruinous. The cost of repair and the inconvenience of lifestyle changes cannot compare to the frightful future this planet is headed. At current rates, hazards are not just inflicted on Earth's oceans but individual human health and the other creatures that rightly inhabit this land. With this concern

Attention Grabber: Every year, billions of pounds of plastic and trash end up in the world’s oceans, adversely impacting marine wildlife populations.

It is also in bags that we use to carry these items. This use of plastic is helpful for humans, but when it has contact with the water it has a massive threat. To a sea turtle, a floating plastic bag looks like a jellyfish. Plastic pellets look like fish eggs to seabirds. When turtles and seabirds consume the plastics in the ocean, many of them will die because it fills up their stomachs. Making it impossible for them to eat other food, so they starve to death. Or they just choke on it. This starts to decline their population, which affects the food chain. Once the food chain is affected, many species will become endangered or extinct. Drifting six pack rings entangle mammals and fish, making it difficult, to move or eat. As our use of plastic increases, so does the danger to marine life. Plastic remains floating on the surface, the same place where their food sources lie, for 400 years. Plastic is durable and strong, which makes it so dangerous once it reaches the ocean. Also in certain areas, plastic gathers together as it carried by

Animals shouldn’t have to suffer because of us, “Plastic materials of varying kinds had spread to all oceans and adjacent seas by the late 1970s or early 1980s and wide concern was being expressed over the amounts of cylindrical, virgin plastic pellets that are industrial feedstock, together with fragmented plastic particles of varying size and shape that were being ingested by pelagic seabirds”. More than a million seabird and water life is killed by plastic, every year. To make matters worse, 10% of plastic that is made in one year ends up in sea, which in turn is harm animals and/or mammals. Once trash enters the sea, it pills up and then water current wash it up on shore. Littering isn’t just a hazard for humans, but all living

Plastic Pollution is a man made disaster, but it is rapidly growing every day. It is causing harm to oceans, sea life, and even human life, as we know it. It is important to prevent plastics from ever touching the ocean and we need to do something about it soon. Plastic pollution is something that is dramatically impacting the environment and taking action is something we have to do before it affects more of our planet.

Silverman (2007), states that, “Plastic constitutes 90 percent of all trash floating in the world's oceans”. Plastic has become a well-known and wanted commodity around the world. It is a commodity that is involved in most things that we use; however, we are oblivious of its bad effects. In the article “Plastic is rubbish” it shows that in 2010 alone, Americans created 31 million tons of plastic waste such as containers, appliances, and cups (n.d.). When plastic is used this excessively it acts as a hazard and a harmful commodity, since it endangers the lives of many creatures including humans. The way this commodity is disposed off should be efficient and should not result in harming the environment either. To solve this problem, all governments should take action and improper plastic disposal should be made illegal and its production should be moderated to lessen its effect on the environment, human health, and overall on the economy worldwide.

This essay will discuss plastic marine pollution, what plastics are, where it is a problem, why it is such a problem, who is involved in the issue and any management strategies and legislations regarding the global issue of plastic marine pollution. Plastic marine pollution occurs when harmful pollutants such as plastic, chemicals and other particles enter the waterways. 80% of all marine pollution comes from the land and could be avoided if governments worked together and applied concerted efforts to mitigate the ingress of plastics and other pollutants that ultimately end up in the global marine environment. Greenpeace estimate that over 8.8 million tonnes of plastic enter waterways, rivers and oceans annually and that over 700 marine species are in danger of extinction as a direct cause of plastic marine pollution. This pollution also negatively impacts marine life and people in a significant manner by damaging marine ecology and limiting the livelihoods of those who rely on the ocean to make their living (Greenpeace International, 2017).

Many people remain oblivious to the seriousness of plastic pollution, a member of the Council of the British Plastics Federation and a Fellow of the Plastics Institute, stated that “Plastics litter is a very small proportion of all litter and causes no harm to the environment except as an eyesore”(Peña). “His comments not only illustrates how the deleterious environmental effects of plastics were entirely overlooked, but also that, apparently, even the plastics industry failed to predict the great boom in the production and use of plastics of the past 30 years. In the marine environment, the perceived abundance of marine life and the vastness of the oceans have lead to the dismissal of the proliferation of plastic debris as a potential hazard.” (Derraik)

This essay will examine the effects of plastic pollution on international, national, state and local levels in the marine ecosystem, the impacts on the health of marine animals and humans, the legislation and management strategies put in place to counteract the negative impacts of the issue and its origins including the evaluation of the effectiveness of these measures and the conflicting perspectives of the stakeholders involved such as, intergovernmental, governmental, corporations, environmental and community groups.

Plastics currently “represent the vast majority of human-made debris present in the oceans” (Reisser, Shaw, Wilcox, Hardersty, Proietti, Thums, & Pattiaratchi, n.d., p.1). According to Sigler (2014), “the magnitude of plastic pollution carried to sea has significantly multiplied over the past several decades” (p. 2). Due to this increase in plastic pollution, oceans are becoming increasingly dangerous to marine wildlife, the environment and human health; which is why policies that ban plastic bags and single use, disposable dishes are crucial to the sustainability of Earth’s water supply.

Many things that humans buy in their everyday life are now being made out of plastic. Many humans just don’t think about the negative effects it can have if they throw one plastic bottle out onto our streets. It will eventually make its way down into our city drains resulting in it going into our local bay. The plastic is most likely going to break up into small little pieces which is going to kill more than just a couple fish because of them thinking that the plastic is food they are able to eat. In the article “Chocking the Oceans with Plastic” by Charles Moore, he says “My colleagues and I estimated that some 2.3 billion pieces of plastic-from polystyrene foam to tiny fragments and pellets- had flowed from Southern California’s urban centers into its coastal waters in just three days of sampling.” Southern California is big but for them to even be able to record into the billions is already crazy enough. Many people are trying to create groups in our cities with local beaches to clean up debris which can have a positive effect on our oceans. The less plastic that is going into our

Plastic is one of the most important material for items production because plastic is very flexible. For examples, water bottle can be made with plastic, chair can be made with plastic, and utensils can be made with plastic. Plastic has helped many manufacture company to reduce the cost for material and increase the amount of production. As a result plastic is a very helpful material for human. However, plastic is also one of the major consequences human are facing, because production of new plastic items are increasing but the old plastic items are not decreasing. Therefore, causing numerous places to have piles of plastics, and ocean is the place that contains most of the plastic waste. As a result, many sea species are being kill by these plastic waste that human dump into the ocean. According to the article “Polymers Are Forever” by Alan Weisman, he wrote that “In 1975, the U.S. National Academy of Science had estimated that all oceangoing vessels together dumped 8 million pounds of plastic annually” (Weisman). The quote demonstrated how much plastic was dumped into the ocean forty-years ago. Over the forty years, human’s population is continuously increasing, which mean amount of plastic will also increase because most of the product are made by plastic. Therefore, human are once again ignoring the consequence of over producing plastic, and continue with the benefit that plastic provides. Moreover, plastic will not only affect sea animals, it will affect the quality of

Plastic pollution within ocean waters is one of the most destructive types of seawater contamination, as it not only poisons seafood, but also harms the population simultaneously. There are plenty of repercussions that occur from allowing waste to be disposed in open waters. Disposing wastes in the water causes ecosystems to become contaminated, resulting in the depletion of selective species that cannot adapt or operate in the confines of their new deadly home. A newspaper article titled Oceans of garbage threaten Earth; Fields Of Debris, discusses the effects of plastic debris on a beach near Vancouver Island. According to the U.S. National Park Services, “ it takes a plastic bottle 450 years to decompose in the environment” (Moneo 1). This process of decomposition has detrimental long-term effects on aquatic life and mammals, as they are prone to ingest the waste found within these waters. Plastic Debris in the World 's Oceans states that, “almost 270 animal species ingest or get tangled in the spiked soup that has become our oceans. Dead ocean birds are found with cigarette lighters in their bellies. Sea turtles snap up bottle caps. Grey whales swallow bottles. Fish partake of the colourful, floating

Many fears and concerns that are really concentrated for garbage and plastic is the the ocean water. It is shown that thousands of garbage and plastic have been found in the middle of the ocean. And that it is causing decreasing numbers in the marine population. The article (For Ocean Animals, ‘Death By Plastic’ Could Be Occurring More Frequently) said that “The whale discovered in the Netherlands is only the fifth whale confirmed to have died from ingesting plastic. This might be because some are able to process it better than others, or there could be more that never made it to shore and therefore couldn’t be reliably counted.

There are many environmentalist groups who dedicate their work towards raising awareness of not only the impacts of waste in the ocean for marine life but also humans as well. Debris Free Oceans, a non-profit organization whose work focuses on managing the lifecycle of plastics as well as encouraging communities to eradicate debris states, “As fisheries contribute greater than 20 percent of the average per capita animal protein intake for more than 1.5 billion people, these bioaccumulation effects are significant.” (2) Having plastics in the oceans eventually finds its way back to us as the trash is bio accumulated through the seafood that is caught by the fisheries and then served to us again. The effects are negative as the article states that plastic has dangerous chemicals such as DDT and PCB which have been linked to “reproductive, developmental, behavioral, neurologic, endocrine, and immunologic adverse health effects in humans” In doing this not only is the human race contaminating itself with the poisons since the poisons can be transferred to developing offspring through the placenta and breast milk. Clearly, reducing the amount of waste in our oceans should be a cause for concern.