Plastic Pollution Essay

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

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

Plastic pollution on the ocean is growing daily. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (fig1), contains more than 79 thousand tones of plastic, and every year more than 6,4 million tones of plastics are discarded in the ocean (Lebreton et al, 2018). The coral triangle is threatened with 3.22 million tones of plastic waste, just from Indonesia, this pollution end up in the coral reef and some of this plastic reach the abyssal and the hadal zones (Chiba et al, 2018) (fig 2).

There are many forms of pollution that occur from oil spills, radioactive wastes, urban air pollution, the release of greenhouse gases, or agricultural pollution, and one of the most preventable, plastic pollution. Plastic pollution is an accumulation in the environment of man-made plastic products to the point that they become problematic and harmful to wildlife, wildlife habitats, or human populations. This accumulation is due to the excessive use of plastics, which has become a worldwide issue, and is accountable for approximately 10% of discarded waste. It has been calculated that 275 million metric tons (MT) of plastic waste was produced in 192 coastal countries in 2010, with as much as 12.7 million MT entering the ocean (Jambeck et al., 2015). Plastic pollution can be classified based on the overall size and thickness, as microdebris (2 µm), mesodebris (1-5 mm), or macrodebris (>20 mm). Plastic can be very harmful to the land, waterways, and the ocean due to its extremely slow biodegrading process, which can exceed hundreds of years. Plastic debris can also be harmful to marine life causing, entanglement, ingestion of plastic waste, and exposure to the chemicals within plastics, which ultimately affect humans as well.

Ever since its first mass production beginning in 1930’s plastic has had an impact on climate change as well as waste production. ("Plastics History." Plastics History) Plastic is made from oil. Oil is a carbon-rich raw material, and plastics are large carbon-containing compounds. They 're large molecules called polymers, which are composed of repeating units of shorter carbon-containing compounds called monomers. (Freudenrich, Craig. "How Plastic Works." 1998.) Plastic is being thrown around everywhere but mainly into the ocean. Whether it’s from natural causes or manually it still gets to places where it shouldn’t be. About 50% of the plastic we use

Among the many types of ocean pollution, microplastic in the ocean is also a huge concern not only for the environment, but also for all marine life. TOXIC: Garbage Island is a documentary that focuses on microplastic in the ocean. The research team took a seven day voyage to the North Pacific Gyre which is the ocean’s “dump.” Most of the trash that sails with the waves in the ocean is plastic, plastic that never fully disintegrates. Overtime, the plastic will break into individual polymers less than or equal to five millimeters in diameter (microplastic) that still floats in the ocean. The problem with this is the pieces of plastic photograde to polymers and can be accidentally ingested by marine animals. These polymers then make their way up the food chain and eventually back to us. “Microplastics as vectors for bioaccumulation of hydrophobic organic chemicals in the marine environment: A state-of-the-science review” is a scholarly article that also focuses on the impact of microplastics on the aquatic life by presenting many laboratory studies. “Props 65 and 67: Stop profiteering from polluting the Golden State” is an editorial by “Los Angeles Times” that talks about the ban on plastic bags in the state of California because of the harm to the sea creatures. “Flotsam and fashion: recycler of 'ghost ' fishing nets makes marine litter trendy” is another article by “The Guardian” that talks about how fishing nets that are floating in the ocean are turned into apparel for

Plastic is taking over the ocean and it should not be, a problem that is going on is the plastic is getting caught in the sea animals and they eventually die. “More than 8 million tons of plastic are dumped in our oceans every year”(The Facts).The sea animals think that the plastic is food and they eventually die from all the plastic they consume. “Marine plastic pollution has impacted. . .86% of

With the ceaseless consumption of plastics, problems arise affecting the current state of the planet along with the existing life that depends on it, negatively impacting the future to come. As Leighton Kille and Rachael Stephens state in their Journalist’s Resource article “Plastics, Human Health and Environmental Impacts: The Road Ahead,” the readily usable products made of plastic create a hazard to people and the environment. Plastics, found in many products and made simple to dispose of, contain harmful chemicals that can endanger the human body as well as any animals that may encounter it. From Kille and Stephens’s research, the impacts of plastics are understood to be an expanding threat to the world. Acknowledging the influence of plastic in the modern world and plastic’s menace on society, I believe in the change of cities’ recycling processes, encouragement of the refusal of purchasing single-use plastic products, and the education on the dangers of plastics on human health and the environment. The world that we live in has run on plastic consumption, which continues to increase as we support the companies that manufacture these items by buying their products. Millennials of the UTA community, the people that can make a difference in the world, will be the ones greatly impacted by the growing production of manufactured plastic goods. Simple, yet greatly influential, differences in an individual’s life can better the world of tomorrow by finding alternatives to

The problem concerning plastic waste in our oceans is the deleterious effects it has on the oceans environment, marine life, and humans. Do you remember a day where you went for a stroll on the beach and never noticed a single piece of plastic? Nearly everyone will answer this question saying no. Beaches are covered with large plastic debris and millions of plastic particles that are taking place of the sand. Plastic is being washed ashore and swept into the ocean. Plastic enters the oceans in numerous

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.

Approximately, 280 million tons of plastic is produced year round around the globe (Sigler, 2014) which accounts for 8% of the worldwide manufacturing for oil (Vegter, et al., 2014). Plastics are a major component in most consumer products; the reason being is that plastic is inexpensive, lightweight, durable, and an excellent insulator. For this reason, plastic can be found in most items from: storage containers, packaging material, communication devices, and transportation. Unfortunately, 3.5 million pieces of plastic are estimated to enter the ocean shores daily; one-third to a half of the garbage found in the ocean originate from the beverage industry (Cohen, 2015). This litter is a symptom of our throw-away society and our approach on how we manage our natural resources (UN, 2011). Nearly one-third of plastics that is generated are for single use items such as: floss, straws, stirrer, coffee lids, and disposable cutlery (Sigler, 2014).

Plastic causes pollution in the ocean and endangers the inhabitants of many sea creatures. Plastic comes in many different kinds and variety, some are largely noticeable and some are micro-particles. Tiny plastic objects are the most dangerous to the sea creatures especially to the marine mammals. These micro or tiny bits and pieces of plastics tend to get consumed accidentally by many marine animals. “Plastic is the great pretender, conceived in mimicry and dedicated to the simulation of everything else in art and nature (208, Ebbesmeyer).” Ebbesmeyer claims that plastics can be any sort of form(s). Just like any other object in the world has some plastic incorporated into it such as toys, appliances/electronics, and people’s daily

According to the trade association PlasticsEurope, “world plastic production grew from some 1.5 million tons in 1950 to an estimated 275 million tons in 2010”(http://school.ebonline.co.nz.ezproxy.kotui.ac.nz/levels/secondary/article/plastic-pollution/477253). Behind the staggering numbers is a global issue what we must solve by reducing the amount of plastic being used. Are there negative effects from the mass use of plastic on the land, Oceans and the human body? The answer is, ‘yes’. Thus, we see such consequences as plastic not only contaminates land but also pollutes water, and these are the natural elements which support human life. The more important threat is that plastic can have an enormously negative influence on human healt

To begin with, plastic in the ocean hurts the animals within it. Humans are not the only inhabitants of the Earth. The animals inside the ocean pay for our consequences. What is failed to be seen is that every time we abuse of what we have, we are hit just as bad. Humans dump the trash and animals have to adapt to it. However, “It has been only around 60 years since plastic came to be,” and it doesn’t give them animals much room to work with (“Measuring biodegradability”). An example of how animals are hurt by plastic is when animals in the ocean consume plastic. It might appear weird that they are interested in eating plastic. However,

To begin, pollution has an enormous impact on the oceans. Every year about 180 million tons of waste are dumped into the ocean by companies. This waste greatly affects the organisms inside the ocean, from coral bleaching to eutrophication. The ocean is roughly 140 square miles, and 84 square miles of it, is filled with billions of pounds of plastic swirling in convergences. This adds up to around forty percent of the world's entire ocean surface. In addition, eighty percent of all this pollution enters the ocean through land activities. Plastic doesn’t decompose, it instead photodegrades. This means that plastic only breaks into smaller pieces, and it never fully goes away. Plastic garbage, which decomposes very slowly, is often mistaken for food by marine animals. These high concentrations of plastic material, particularly