Long-Term Environmental Consequences

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

Clean water is essential to our basic needs as human beings and has been acknowledged as a basic human right according to the UN as of July 28, 2010. Still, 1 in 9 (782 million) people don’t have access to clean water, 1 in 3 (2.5 billion) don’t have access to adequate sanitation which results in the spread of often fatal and preventable disease. In a world where 2 in 5 people own a smartphone, it’s easy to forget that for some people even the most basic necessities are hard to come by. Approximately 3.5 million people die every year due to inadequate water supplies. Access to sanitation and safe drinking water could save the lives of 1.5 million children each year.

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

According to Ocean Crusaders, there is over 100,000 marine animals that die each year because of plastic bags. “Beaked whale species in particular are highly susceptible to swallowing plastic bags as they are believed to strongly resemble their target prey, squid,” Britannica Advocacy for Animals states. Animals do not know what a plastic bag is, and often mistaken them for food. When an animal ingests a plastic bag, the plastic bag will be stuck in the gut for a very long time, sometimes more than 1000 years! Also, food would not be able to go through the intestines anymore and would probable cause the animal to die slowly. Since a plastic bag takes around 1000 years to completely decompose, it means that by the time the animal decomposes, the plastic bag is still not fully decomposed and will be back in the ocean, ready to kill another animal. As you can tell, plastic bags are very harmful to animals, especially marine animals. When plastic bags are banned, there is no chance of it going into the ocean, and many animals will be saved.

A fifth of the world’s population (1.2 billion people) lack access to safe water today.

Two out of every five people living in Sub-Saharan Africa lack safe water. A baby there is 500 times more likely to die from water-related illness than one from the United States. This is a serious ongoing issue that requires the rest of the world to take action. Water spreads diseases easily if the necessary precautions are not taken. Many developing African countries don’t have sewage treatment, or the people don’t have methods to filter and disinfect. Once a person is sick either there is no way to cure them, or medical care is too expensive, so they are left untreated with a high risk of death. Although many believe that the fight for sanitary water in Africa is insurmountable, people in these developing countries can overcome their challenge to access clean water and avoid water-borne diseases through proper sewage treatment facilities, universal water filtration and medical care.

Since the 1990’s Americans are drinking less soft drinks and are now consuming more bottled water than ever. Currently, Americans are drinking over 50% more bottled water than they did in 2001 (theatlantic.com). A reason for this could be that more Americans are aware of the health issues soft drinks create. Although the resurgence and emphasis on a healthier society is a positive aspect of the popularity of water bottles, it does also bring negative aspects. For example, 80 million bottles of water are sold daily in the US daily which means that 80 million plastic bottles need to be disposed. Recycling is what many people believe combats the issue of disposing of so many water bottles but only 20% of those plastic bottles actually get recycled leaving the other 80% to end up in the ocean or even a landfill. This harms the environment, as landfills tend to remove the oxygen from the ground and release methane, a greenhouse gas, harming the ozone layer. A depleting ozone layer causes global warming, the ice caps to melt, and an increased risk in skin cancer. As for the oceans, the plastic bottles degrade then conjoin to create plastic masses as large as the state of Texas. This harms the coral reef and not only pollutes the ocean but also people’s food supply as many fish ingest the plastic then people ingests the fish.

In the documentary “Inside the Garbage of the World”, the main social problem being explained is that there has been a great influx of plastic and other type of garbage in oceans and their beaches. This buildup of pollution has largely affected the wildlife population ranging from animals on the beaches to the creatures of the ocean. In oceans, what is called ‘garbage patches’, a large buildup of garbage that flow to one area in the oceans, are being created. Approximately 50 percent of all plastic sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor but about 2 times that much is actually already on the ocean floor. In fact, according to the documentary, there is a garbage patch that is to the left of California that is the size of half of the United States. Each year, about 4.7 million tons of plastic goes in the ocean a year and it is estimated that by 2050, there will be another 33 billion tons of plastic added to the present amount. Eighty percent of the current pollution comes from the land. According to marine researchers, twice as much plastic debris is one the ocean floor than it was 10 years ago. In the futures, plastic will break down into smaller pieces of plastic, creating a bigger problem from the habitat. This plastic pollution is one of the leading cause for beach and ocean inhabiting creatures be extinct because animals are mistaking these plastic pieces for food. When scientist began to dissect beach animals such as birds, they discovered that at least fifteen pounds of

Plastic debris and litter is a serious pollution that is currently affecting oceans, waterways and coastal lines. Plastic is a man made tangible substance made from a range of organic polymers such as polyethylene, PVC, and nylon. This material is high on demand with the human kind but takes an average of 450 years to disintegrate. This product is impacting the marine environment, wildlife, and then eventually circling back to humans. Currently, the world’s biggest plastic patch is located north in the Pacific Ocean, trapped in what’s called a gyre (known as an ocean rip). There are also another two plastic islands located in the Indian and Atlantic oceans. These three plastic patches contain a higher amount of plastic but to today's count, in total there are 5 forward. Sea Education Society scientists studied plastics in the Atlantic and calculated there are 580,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer. Causes of plastic are endless, but trash is the main contributor. Plastic is located in almost every item around, and once it's in the trash, all the garbage gets dumped in land fills and seeps into the ground and soil affecting wildlife. Plastic is cheap and substantially available, so over production of plastic is high. The cause of plastic filling up land and oceans is a couple of reasons. People normally have a one-time use for plastic then throw it away but after that, the plastic is hard to eradicate. Burning plastic leads

Plastics of the 20th century should consider the health of the environment. Over the past 153 years http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/11/14/fsummit.climate.plasticbags/ of producing plastics there is an evident impact of the environment. The Earth’s ocean has 5.25 trillion pieces, which is equivalent to 269,000 tons floating on the surface. Some of plastic is as small as 1cm2; this makes this every difficult to reverse the already existing impact of humans. This large scale disaster also affects the wildlife. 100,000 marine animals and 1 million birds have to suffer the consequence of plastic pollution every year. Globally a million single-use plastic bags are used every minute, this number is also increasing. http://oceancrusaders.org/plastic-crusades/plastic-statistics/

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

By just a simple walk on any beach, anywhere, and people could see plastic or garbage waste. Many people may think this issue does not affect them but, it affects everyone and more sadly enough sea animals. Too many people plastic is a modern-day thing that they must have because it is cheap to produce and durable. For others plastic is the cause of great trouble and suffering because, “the world uses more than 100 million tons of plastic annually but recycles less than 5 percent of it” (Kiener). Many people only focus on the benefits of plastic but, besides the benefits do not be foolish; think beyond satisfying material needs. Plastic bags, water bottles, and many more other waste end up in the oceans and along shorelines. Plastic litter clogs sewer systems causing deadly floods, chokes sea animals, and contaminates fish with toxic chemicals that can develop endangering humans who eat the fish. (Kiener)

Plastics harm animals and consequence the death of them. Thousands of wild animals and sea animals are dying because of the plastic pollutant. In addition, once the animals swallow the plastic, it will not pass by the animals’ gut so it stucks, and that leads to a slow and excruciating death. Moreover, as plastics need more than lifetime to decompose, after the animal dies and decays, the plastic will be freed back again to the environment to keep killing other animals (Ark, n.d.). In the marine environment, plastic bags are the most frequently mistaken

Water deprivation of the people living in rural communities is a widely documented occurrence all over the world. It is estimated that over a billion people across the world do not have access to safe, clean drinking water (WHO/UNICEF, 2006), even though as a basic human need it is an essential component of the right to life. Contaminated water endangers both the physical and social health of all people and it is a disregard to human dignity. In this context, decreasing this number by half by 2015 was one of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.

Due to their regurgitation ability; most studies have focused on the ingestion of plastic pollution by bird, this does little harm to birds used in the studies. The effects of ingestible plastic on fish have not been studied as thoroughly and no studies have been conducted on filter-feeding organisms, which do not possess a feeding mechanism which would allow them to distinguish between plastic and plankton. Plastic pollution is only getting worse due to increasing population of developing countries. A wide variety of marine species is known to be harmed by plastic debris. This could threaten the survival of certain species, especially since many are sadly endangered by other types of anthropogenic actions.