Persuasive Essay On The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Everybody throws away trash with little or no thought about where it’s going. What you might not know is that a lot of trash goes into our ocean. You may think it is not a big deal and that it’s just a little bit of trash in a really big ocean, but it’s not just a little bit of trash. In fact, it’s a whole lot. There is a place between California and Hawaii called the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, but is better known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. This area is the largest landfill in the world and is completely in the ocean. What are the effects of the landfill on the environment and how can it be prevented and rehabilitated to its original state?

Is anybody aware that on a daily basis you could be consuming the 5 million tonnes of plastic that enters the sea annually? That is why today I will be informing you on the dangers and risks of animal and human lives due to ocean pollution. Clearly, I am against the actions of these careless people. The trash and plastic that is thrown onto the streets everyday ends up blowing into the water and polluting our world’s beautiful oceans.

Plastic is increasingly finding its way into the world ocean and now constitutes over 40% of its surface. Only about 10 percent of all plastic produced is recycled each year, and about 8 million tons ends up in our oceans ( “The Facts”). Shorelines around the world, especially around China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam are littered with plastic trash and other flotsam. Trash in the ocean is also swept up by currents and clumped together to form gigantic gyres. There are potentially 11 gyres of plastic in the five major oceans around the world. The Great Pacific

Ocean dumping and trash pollution are huge environmental health problem in the United States and around the world. Not only does the water pollution affect water we use, but endangers and kills animals and plants that use the ocean as their home or as a source of food to survive. If trash, such as plastic, makes their way into the main sewage system, they also can make their way to the ocean when water treatment system facilities are overflowed with rain water. In addition, some boater’s will dump their trash directly into the sea, which at one point was the main cause of plastic being in the ocean.

Since plastics in oceans are so damaging I think actions should be taken to help limit the effects of plastics in our oceans. Even if you are a very busy person you can help reduce the effects by using less single use plastic items like plastic bags, straws, or forks/spoons. To cut back on using so many plastic water bottles or cups, you could start using a reusable water bottle. Another method to cut back on plastic pollution in the ocean is recycling. Instead of throwing away single use plastics after using them, just throw them into the recycling bin instead to be repurposed. It helps keep the ocean clean and also reduces the amount of new plastic that gets made. If you want a less hands on way to battle the plastic pollution, you can consider

According to the article Great Pacific Garbage Patch, National Geographic explains how there us a patch of trash twice the size of Texas, but the entire patch cannot be seen with the naked eye. This article says, “For many people the idea of a garbage patch conjures up images of an island of trash floating on the ocean. In reality, these patches are almost entirely made up of tiny bits of plastic called microplastics. Microplastics can’t always be seen by the naked eye. It has been discovered that 70 percent of the trash sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor.” This quote gives you the cold hard facts on this problem. Also, “70 percent of the trash in the ocean sinks to the bottom.” Now think about all of the bottom feeders that can be harmed from this when they digest it and it gets stuck in their throat and die. So think before you decide to leave a plastic bag or plastic bottle on the beach, because you don’t know how many hundred fishes can die from one

As an introduction, Stone explains what a garbage patch is and how the Pacific Garbage Patch as formed. He then focuses on “Project Kaisei” which was a project set up to test ways of removing plastics from the Pacific Garbage patch and disposing of them safely. They found that the larger pieces were easy to remove, but the smaller pieces posed a problem. These methods included dragging nets and places trash reciprocals need areas with high concentrations of plastic that could be picked up later. The next step is to find an environmentally friendly ay to dispose of the collected plastics. One of these methods if called pyrolysis and works by turning waste into oil and other energy forms without using combustion. This process could account for 85% of the plastic currently in the Pacific Garbage Patch. Furthermore, a pyrolysis system could be mounted on a ship and taken directly to the garbage patch and loaded with plastics by other boats. Unfortunately, these are expensive systems. A cheaper option would be to concentrate the sun’s rays and highly concentrated UV lights to excel the natural beak down process. The problem with this method is that it still leaves micro plastic in the ocean. According to Stone, some want to just leave the garbage thinking that it is a better alternative to landfills. Lastly, environmental activist think that we need to prevent the problem at its source and stop manufacturing such large quantities of plastic. Moreover, we should make

After viewing the film “A Plastic Ocean” it discussed the dangers many animals in our oceans face due to plastic waste as a result many animals and organisms are dying from this catastrophic situation. In the film, they stated that “In the past ten years we have made over a million of plastic products, which are placed in the ocean”. Not to mention about eight million of plastic is dumped in the ocean every year and this is continuing to happen. A question that I have is how can we reduce the amount of plastic waste in the ocean and bring awareness to this situation? I truly believe we must come together as a community to help cease this issue. Some steps or methods I think we should use to help reduce water pollution is by recycling and disposing

The numbers of how much plastic and trash that are dumped into our oceans every year are sickening. According to Julie Mailto (2017) from her website Plastic Oceans, “More than 8 million tons of plastic are dumped into our oceans every year” (para. 1). Plastic debris in oceans affect more than just simply ocean plants. Around 250 species of ocean animals are affected and are known to suffer from the consequences of severe plastic pollution. Reusable plastics are a great alternative to single use plastics. By using refillable water bottles the amount of plastic waste could be drastically decreased. Not using plastic straws, silverware, and sandwich bags could also lessen the effect of waste in our oceans. Recycling is the best way to cut back on how much debris ends up in the water. I have been recycling since I can remember. If people got paid to recycle then everyone would without question. I believe recycling should be a law in our state because it already is in other states and has been shown to reduce waste pollution so I believe it needs to be implicated in ours.

of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the exact size remains unknown. In addition, Doucette warns us that this patch contains more than ten million tons of waste. She describes the area to be a “fetid swamp of debris where tiny bits of decaying plastic outweigh zooplankton- one of the most prolific and abundant organisms on the planet- by a ration of six-to-one”(Doucette). It is now apparent that the amount of plastic particles residing in our oceans is damaging the natural habit and this trash is not going anywhere. Due to the currents in the ocean, plastic particles are

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.

Today, scientists believe the world's largest garbage dump isn't on land but it is in the

Plastic pollution has reached the all-time high. According to recent research, there are already more than 5 trillion plastic pieces weighing over 250 000 tons afloat in the oceans (Eriksen et al., 2014). Sustainablecoastlines.org, a New Zealand Charity dedicated to cleaning up the island’s coastlines, estimates that 72.4% of all plastic pollution in the Pacific oceans consists of single use plastics, 22.5% of which is food wrappers, containers and bottle caps (“Our Impact”). Those numbers spell out an urgency to come up with a sustainable solution that will slow down the production of plastic debris while maintaining

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the effect of the human population’s waste. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of trash floating in the ocean where there is a high density of garbage because of the Pacific Gyre. “Though their name suggests rafts of bobbing refuse, the patches are instead areas with high concentrations of trash — mostly wee bits of plastic particles that have degraded from larger pieces of litter such as water bottles. The bits amass within ocean vortices, driven by wind and ocean currents.”( Mole) The types of waste found in the garbage patch are micro plastics and macro plastics. Macro plastics can range from a few centimeters to a couple of meters, however micro plastics are only a couple of

“46,000 pieces of plastic trash float in every square mile of ocean…the whole ocean is now infected with plastic. It’s impossible to get it out” (Ellingwood). The public and the government continues to deny this statistic, as they claim it is too expensive to clean up the oceans. However such people take the ocean for granted. It is essential for them to realize that the ocean is an important part of our ecosystem, and therefore impacts all of humanity. Furthermore, not only do people harm themselves, but due to their carelessness, ignore the life of the marine creatures as well. Personal responsibility should not be the only reason for the world’s caution, because the ocean is a “lifeline of survival” for many, as it controls their jobs,