Plastic Pollution

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

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

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.

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.

By the year 2050 plastic bottles will outnumber fish in the ocean. Last year a study by the National Academy of Sciences showed that there are over five trillion pieces of plastic currently littering the ocean. Many people believe that throwing away plastic would have negligible impact on humans and animals, this is untrue. Thousands of birds, turtle, seals, fish, and other marine animals die every after entangling themselves in or consuming the tons of plastic currently in the ocean. Plastic is such a durable material that according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, every single bit of plastic ever made still exists. The ocean has turned into our own personal landfill, affecting millions of lives. Organizations such as

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

The overuse of plastics in today's society has become major environmental issue for our oceans. Plastic pollution is the dumping, littering, or disposing of any type of man-made plastic that has been produced and has ended up in our ocean and has not been recycled.

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

Plastic pollution makes up the majority of pollution problems all over the world, on land and off land. There are few solutions to fixing this pollution problem overall because of plastic properties. The pollution in the ocean poses a great problem to marine ecosystems, and to the health of the human population due to its durability. Over the years the consumption of plastic products has risen a marginal amount making the issue of pollution even larger (“When the Mermaids Cry: The Great Plastic Tide”). The pollution causes damage to the economy, environment, marine life, human health, along with the global impact. If the plastic pollution problem does not decrease, or completely disappear, then there will be great consequences in the oceans and on land.

With the combination of polymers that don’t biodegrade and mass overproduction, companies are harming the environment in severe ways. Plastic, a material seen everywhere, is a polymer made from oil. It is mass produced to make everything from shampoo bottles to automobiles and does not biodegrade. When it is eventually thrown out, the waste usually finds it way into the ocean, where it is either buried under sediment or eaten by marine life (Weisman 287-295). Creating a material that will ultimately kill marine life will undoubtedly wreak havoc on the

When the discussion about pollution rises, the first thought that comes to people’s minds is the long-debated topic of air pollution from greenhouse gases. Certainly, this type of pollution will have a critical impact on the future of Earth’s ability to sustain life, but the widespread discussion on this one specific type of pollution has also masked necessary discussions on some seldom mentioned types of pollution which will be detrimental to the future of some of Earth’s life. One example of the various other forms of pollution is a kind which has existed for less than a century, yet it now greatly plagues a significant portion of the Earth: plastic pollution in the oceans. Although it may seem that this issue only endangers the health of marine life, plastic pollution is also harmful to all the species higher up in the food chain including humans. If not properly addressed, then plastic pollution will lead to a rise of significant health issues for both ocean life and humans as the issue escalates in the coming decades.

According to Erik van Sebille, an associate investigator at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of New South Wales, “A piece of plastic discarded into the sea travels far and wide, carried by complex currents. Eventually, the material settles into one of five distinct garbage patches in the subtropical oceans”. Van Sebille paints a vivid imagery of where plastic waste ends up in with words. The invention of the compound celluloid also known as plastic has changed the modern world. Throughout the years the use and dependency of plastic has undeniably grown. If one were to observe their room and the objects in that room there is without a doubt objects that are built from some sort of plastic material. There are many issues and questions formed from the topic of plastic. Although plastic use has its benefits, the issue of plastic pollution has arise, which is plastic pollution can be very harmful to the environment and life on Earth; so there are many options that can be used to control the amount of plastic pollution by reducing, reusing, and recycling.

During the recent periods of human activity we have seen the worst impact on the environment and on our oceans ever recorded. With the increase in population, with more than 40% of the world population living within 100km from the coastline4 and increased use of plastics, more amounts of plastic and plastic debris has made its way into oceans around the world. With Plastics being widely adopted because of their durability as well as it being more cost effective to manufacture new plastic then recycle, a significant amount of plastics enter our oceans each year. With no oceans and seas free from plastic, it causes and increase in marine organisms becoming trapped and dying due to plastic ingestion and entanglement1. With this issue only going to increase and there not being enough resources to manage the plastic already been dumped, strategies are being made and are need to be made in order for plastic to stop entering our oceans1.

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

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