Ocean Plastic Pollution

With new technology and different resources that make human life easier, there are increased problems for the environment and wildlife. Plastic was a huge discovery and it has changed everyday life since then. Plastic has a low cost and has replaced many traditional products such as wood and glass. Because of their wide variety of uses, plastics are used throughout the entire world. This poses problems with how to safely dispose of plastics and the damage they cause when they are not disposed of properly.

Plastic has been used for only a century since it was first introduced in 1909 by Leo Hendrik. It is a phenol-formaldehyde compound and it was quickly called the “material of a thousand uses” (Doucette, 2009). Plastic today is in everything

Grocery bags, bottles, micro beads, cups, and straws are carried throughout the oceans everyday. According to the article Ocean Plastics Pollution: A Global Tragedy for our Oceans and Sea Life by biologicaldiversity.org states that, “Plastics pollution has a direct and deadly effect on wildlife. Thousands of seabirds and sea turtles, seals and other marine mammals are killed each year after ingesting plastic or getting entangled in it.” The plastic is invading thousands of marine animals’ homes and the effects are huge. The article continues and says that endangered animals such as the Pacific Loggerhead turtle and the Hawaiian monk seal are especially susceptible to the affects of the plastic because they eat and get tangled in it. They are just two of the 300 species that this occurs. The article explains that sea turtles often mistake floating plastic as food which then causes huge and even deadly affects on their intestinal system by causing blockages to the gut and intestinal bleeding. Birds too ingest this plastic and then gain a sensation of being full causing them to starve to death. Parents feed their young pieces of plastic which causes death to young. According to the United Nations Environmental program an estimated 100,000 marine mammals and 1 million sea bird die every year because of the plastic debris (Doucette,

There is a dire need to control the plastic output that is being placed into the oceans. There are some ways to reduce the amount of plastic we use across the planet. However, the most reasonable way to reduce the amount of plastic in the oceans and lakes is to simply reduce the amount we use. It would be impossible to drag a net through the entire ocean to capture the plastic. Alka Zadgaonkar is the head of the department of applied chemistry at the G.H College of Engineering in India. She has a theoretical plan to further breakdown the plastic and turn it into a liquid hydrocarbon used for energy. However, the problem arises in capturing the individual pieces of plastic as well as extracting a liter of fuel takes one kilogram of plastic and 100 grams of coal. This means that even her method to clean up the ocean would not be environmentally friendly (Doucette, 2009). The only real way to reduce the amount of plastic would be to stop using plastic, but that is not yet feasible as plastic is in everything we use. We can limit the amount we use which will reduce the amount that is placed in the marine