There is plastic in many places; as an example, it often wraps food, provides the means to carry groceries, and packages just about everything that can be purchased. The advantages of plastics are that they are inexpensive, lightweight, and strong. However, the disadvantages of plastics also result from these same characteristics: plastics don’t disappear – they decompose into smaller pieces (and eventually into microscopic particles). The problems that plastic pollution creates for our environment and health are not going to happen someday in the future; they are occurring now, in the air you breathe, the water you consume, and the food you ingest. In studies on the ocean’s deepest trenches to the tops of the world’s highest mountains, scientists have discovered plastics in human blood and lungs.
Plastic Takes Centuries to Disappear
It takes approximately four hundred fifty years for a plastic water bottle to dissolve. A piece of plastic fishing line is estimated to take 600 years to decompose. Plastics don’t ever actually disappear when they “decompose”, instead they break down into little pieces of plastic as they’re exposed to sunlight and waves. So even after the bottles in this beach clean up have been removed, the small pieces from these bottles will continue to diseminate throughout the environment, entering into the soil, air, and water for hundreds of years to come.If you use a bottle for five minutes, your grandchildren will be able to visit that same location where you used your bottle in five hundred years. The world produces more than four hundred million tonnes of plastic every year; less than this happens to get recycled; most plastic materials end up in our landfills, rivers, and oceans where they will remain indefinitely.
Ocean Wildlife Is Dying from Ingestion
Marine creatures are unable to distinguish between plastics and food sources. For example, sea turtles often confuse plastic bags as jellyfish, while whales are consuming thousands of microplastics daily through filter feeding. Also, seabirds often give young birds plastic items as food. When absorbed, plastics block our digestive system and eventually this results in starvation of the animal. Unfortunately whales can so much gobble plastic and also it results in their stomachs exploding.
Coral Reefs Are Being Smothered
Coral reefs provide habitat to approximately one-fourth of the world’s total number of marine species. The presence of plastic in the ocean is killing coral reefs. Microplastics accumulate on the surface of corals, limiting the ability of sunlight to reach the coral, thus contributing to disease. Research indicates that when corals come into contact with plastics, the likelihood of disease is 80 percent, while for corals with no plastic present, it is just 4 percent. The use of fishing gear including nets, which often rest upon the reef, causes the unwanted separation of fragile branches from the reef that took decades to develop.
Soil and Farmland Are Contaminated
All that plastic is making its way into the soil where our food is grown. Most don’t realize that many farmers use sewage sludge (aka waste) as fertilizer. When we wash our clothes we release microplastics from synthetic fibers which settle on the ground and are ingested by earthworms who transfer the plastic to everything else they eat including the crops. Plastic mulch covers farmers’ fields to prevent weeds. Those too break down into plastic pieces ingested by earthworms. Plastic is found in everything now including commercial fertilizers tested by one study. As soil health declines so do crop yields which prompts the farmer to add more chemical fertilizer creating a vicious cycle. The beginning of this crisis is with the degradation of our soil.
Recycling Is Not the Solution You Think
Most people think recycling is going to save us from plastic pollution, but recycling only gets maybe 9% of all plastic ever made back into original product form. The rest ends up in landfills or the environment. Further, recycling is very expensive and most plastic can only be recycled 1-2 times before it gets too degraded to recycle. A lot of countries have started to ban plastic import due to our pollution problems. You may notice many drinks come in containers with a recycling symbol on them. But did you know that this symbol only tells you that the container is made of plastic and that it CAN be recycled – not that it actually WILL be recycled. The 400 million tons of new plastic that are produced every year vastly outweigh the recycling capabilities that exist today.
Solutions Already Exist but Require Action
As we discussed, unfortunately there is so much plastic pollution happening on earth, it is recommended to report that there is hope on the planet as well. Advanced nations are banning plastic bags, straws, and cutlery and enacting deposit return schemes for bottles with high recycling rates. Biodegradable products made from seaweed and mushrooms are already appearing on the market. But the most effective solution of all is to produce less plastic in the first place. This requires a government policy or law, a company to redesign packaging, and an individual who chooses not to use single-use plastic when convenient alternatives are available.
Conclusion
As we concluded, in this particular decade a crisis of plastic is taking place. Unfortunately many different animals living in the ocean have been making headlines due to the fact that plastic waste has caused their death, some examples of this include: sea turtles, seals, birds and many other kinds of aquatic life. Worse still, coral reefs worldwide are dying due to plastic pollution. Another thing scientists also learned is that humans have plastic microbeads in our blood. Card 1: The truth is…; Card 2 Plastic pollution exists in all aspects of Life; Land (soils) Water (oceans) Air But here humans created the problem so we can solve it! You just need to scale down production, offer some flash new packaging options.