Baby Albatross Plastic Research Paper

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For an Albatross bird living on Midway island, life is centered around breeding, eating, sleeping, pooping, and repeating. However, with increased levels of plastic accumulating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch near their island home, staying alive has become a more difficult task than nature intended. This is because parent Albatross often pick up plastic from the garbage patch and feed it to their young after mistaking it for food. Baby Albatross cannot pass plastic through their systems or regurgitate it, so after consuming too much, they often die either from starvation when their plastic filled stomachs mistakenly send signals to their brains communicating that they are full, or from internal injury due to the sharp edges of some pieces …show more content…

According to the American Council of Chemistry, plastics, which are otherwise known as polymers, are comprised of carbon, hydrogen, chlorine, nitrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and other elements that are combined through the conversion of natural products like oil, natural gas, or coal (ACA, n.d.). Between 7 and 8 % of the oil and natural gasses produced annually are used either directly in the conversion of such fossil fuels to plastics, or in powering the processes to produce plastics (Hopewell, Dvorak & Kosior, 2009). Plastic combinations can either form as thermoplastics, which are plastics whose atoms are connected in long chains that can be melted and reused, or thermosets, which are plastics whose atoms are arranged in three dimensional patterns that cannot be melted or reused (ACC, n.d.). Plastics are used in a wide range of products. For example, polyesters are used in textiles and fabrics, polyvinylidene chlorides are used for food packaging, polycarbonates are used for glasses and disks, and more. By the United States energy averages of 2015, each kg of plastic produced requires 62-108 mega joules of energy. The plastic requiring the largest amount of energy per kg is silicon which required about 235 mega joules of energy per kg. Three hundred and twenty two million metric tons of plastic produced in 2015 alone, and that value continues to raise, (Global plastic production,

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