Essay On Effects Of Plastic In The Ocean

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What is the effect of plastic in the ocean?
Plastic is everywhere. “A simple definition could be: any of a group of synthetic or natural organic materials that may be shaped when soft and then hardened, including many types of resins, resinoids, polymers, cellulose derivatives, casein materials, and proteins: used in place of other materials, as glass, wood, and metals, in construction and decoration, for making many articles, as coatings, and, drawn into filaments, for weaving.” (plastic-pollution.org, 2016)
“Plastic has infiltrated the ocean’s ecosystem, from plankton to whales.” (fortune.com, 2015) “Plastic is versatile, lightweight, flexible, moisture resistant, strong, and relatively inexpensive.” (plastic-pollution.org, 2016) Plastic materials hold the food we eat, the water we drink, the groceries we bring home from the store, the straws we sip drinks through, the beads in the fancy soaps we wash our faces with just to name a few. (biologicaldiversity.org, 2015) “Our tremendous attraction to plastic, coupled with an undeniable behavioral propensity of increasingly over-consuming, discarding, littering and thus polluting, has become a combination of lethal nature.” (plastic-pollution.org, 2016) Plastic is a convenience, but the use of plastics is coming at a very high price. “Today billions of pounds of plastic can be found in swirling convergences making up about 40 percent of the world’s ocean surfaces.” …show more content…

“In a 2006 report, Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans, Greenpeace stated that at least 267 different species are known to have suffered from entanglement and ingestion of plastic debris.” (plastic-pollution.org, 2016) “The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said that plastic debris kills an estimated 100,000 marine mammals annually, millions of birds and fishes.”(plastic-pollution.org,

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