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Plastics effect on the ocean
Effects of plastic pollution in the marine ecosystem
Effects plastic pollution will have on our future
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Recommended: Plastics effect on the ocean
A lot of waste in thrown away each year. According to ECO360’s “Plastic Garbage” there are a lot of surprising facts about plastic. In just America alone, they use roughly 2.5 million water bottles every hour! Unfortunately, only one or two percent of plastic is recycled. With this being said, about 14 billion pounds of trash is dumped into the oceans every year! This is how the plastic islands have been created. Plastic islands are large clutters of plastic formed into one big mess. There are currently five known garbage islands in the world today. There are two in the Pacific Ocean, two in the Atlantic Ocean, and one in the Indian Ocean (Budnikov). These large plastic islands are incredibly dangerous to marine life. Thousands of marine wildlife …show more content…
This is where we are running into issues and why people think it is okay to be dumping those issues away into the ocean. Out of sight out of mind, right? Wrong. This is not how we should be treating the planet because, eventually, it’s going to be unlivable. Many questions can be asked when discussing the plastic islands. Such as, “How were they formed?”, “Who’s responsible?”, “How can we fix it?”, and “Where to get involved”. These are just a few brief questions that one could be asking themselves as they try to come up with a solution to, maybe, better the ocean in ways that we reduce the amount of plastic dumped into the oceans. One way I will answer these questions is with the experiment made by Budnikov, where he demonstrated the creation of a plastic island. My hopes is for this proposal to be aimed towards people who can make a stand. My main view are people in their twenties through forties who have the ability to stand up against others and speak for what is right. The reason these people should care is because they may have an effect for their future children and …show more content…
Sometimes, people don’t do things because they don’t realize what they’re doing is hurting the environment, or they do not want to admit to it. Telling people that they are living life wrong is not going to get me anywhere. Rather than doing this, I plan to inform people of the ways plastic is harming marine life and ways to cut back. Perhaps I will extend outward to explain how people can get involved to saving the Earths’ oceans. People can donate money or their time to help out. My main goal of this proposal is to acknowledge the problem with plastic in today’s society and to inform more people about the harm it causes. I hope to accomplish this in my
Which means their obviously bad for the aquatic marine life environment & are cause many different forms of damage for them & us as one. On p.g. 23 of The New York Times upfront magazine “Birds,fish, sea turtles, & others are getting tangled in plastic bags or mistake them for food & choke”. Someone else might argue that they could the plastic bags in landfills instead of oceans. But that counter- argument is flawed because you’re just polluting by burning plastic which is bad on our part we’re not doing our part to support & taking care of the earth. Plastic in the ocean isn't just bad for plants & animals but for humans too because of the food chain some of us eat animals as a meat source such as aqua marine life like fish. If the fishermen catch fish that have been eating plastic then it's in our food supply if we eat that fish it's gonna be bad for us so many will end up getting sick from the plastic inside of the fish then what will we do our aqua marine food supply will go down the drain we couldn’t eat the fish since it's basically contaminated with plastic that we’re dumping there instead of trying to fix it & getting rid of plastic bags for good for the good of the earth. We’re causing damage towards the earth by dumping all that plastic into the ocean which damages our water supply it’ll poison us although we clean the water it depends on how big the plastic particles are, it’ll make us sick & sense it’s been lying in the oceans could bring in new pathogens &
Every year eight million tons of plastic trash end up in the ocean (National Geographic), and every year little is done to stop the destruction of this resource. As trash continues to pour into what happens to be the most relied on resource, humans continue to stand idle and witness the atrocity. While it has become evident that many are not aware of this issue, or simply do not care, organizations such as “Surfrider” have taken on the tedious task of bringing this travesty to attention of others. Surfrider is a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and preserving oceans around the world. As part of their campaign, Surfrider published a strong and effective advertisement in hopes of convincing viewers to halt the destruction of the ocean. This advertisement effectively utilizes various rhetorical devices such as imagery to provoke pathos, an anaphora, and
Throughout the country one might find themselves seeing a plastic bag floating around or even stuck in a tree. This is a problem that most want to eliminate. A topic that Mangu-Ward writes about is the problem of plastic bags in marine life and other wildlife. For people the thought of animals dying angers them. These decisions that people are making currently are emotional decision as Mangu-Ward describes them. Many marine life animals have died from the cause of littering of the plastic bag. Mangu-Ward writes, “plastic bags make up 3.8 percent of beach litter”. Finding fish, turtles, and many more marine and wildlife animals with plastic bags either suck around their necks or in their throats is something that many do not like to see or hear. This evidence can also be supported when Mangu-Ward writes, “1 million birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die each year from eating or getting entangled in plastic”. Mangu-Ward is currently giving evidence that plastic bags are bad for the
This pollution problem is so ubiquitous plastic can be found throughout the marine environment from coastlines to near shore lagoons to remote ocean hotspots where plastics caught up in marine currents. And gathered up into huge garbage patches that swirl
Around the world, about 245 million tons of plastic is produced yearly. This figure represents a whopping 70 pounds of plastic thrown annually for each of the 7.1 billion people on the planet. The sad news is that of these 245 million tons of plastic per year, around 4.7 million tons of plastic garbage gathers in vast floating oval-shaped ocean garbage patches.
While a beautiful sunset on the beach can be astounding, a spectacular scene is not the only benefit oceans provide. Without the oceans, we would not have adequate amounts of oxygen to breathe or enough protein to eat. The Earth's climate would not be inhabitable for human beings and many animals. The oceans supply medicines, food and drinking water which arise from ocean processes. Out of the five oceans, the Pacific Ocean is the world’s largest and deepest ocean. It spreads over an area of 165.2 million square kilometers. More than 25,000 islands float within the Pacific. Within the Pacific Ocean lies an unusual island, an island that is more than twice the size of Texas and is earth’s largest landfill, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (McLendon). Society is unaware that the excess use of plastic and other non-biodegradable materials has ended up in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and is the main source of ocean pollution. The solutions, ranging from manual clean-up to eliminating any further obliteration to the Garbage Patch, will reduce the amount of effluence the world has to endure.
Every time we throw away a plastic bottle, drive our cars, and even burn those millions of fossil fuels to operate all those huge factories, there is a chance it will pollute the ocean and eventually affect the way we live. There should be stricter laws regulating human pollution, in order to protect our ocean ecosystem. The ocean is an abundant source of life. It is home to thousands of different creatures, provides a great source of food, and provides the earth with about one half of the oxygen needed to sustain life. National Geographic: Pollution, especially plastic, is a catastrophic problem.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is sometimes referred to as the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch and the Pacific Trash Vortex is a floating patch of garbage that has collected in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, which is located in the middle of two high-pressure areas between Hawaii and California. The majority of the garbage, which is also called marine debris, in the patch is plastic, but items made from other materials such as glass and rubber are also present. Though the garbage patch is too large and goes too deep under the surface of the ocean for scientists to determine exactly how much garbage is in it, they have collected up to 750,000 bits of plastic one square kilometer (CITE). This sort of debris floating around in the ocean is dangerous for several reasons. One important reason is that marine animals mistake some of the garbage, especially plastics, for food (CITE). Another reason that the floating debris is so dangerous is because it can block sunlight from reaching deeper levels of the ocean, and thus, it removes the energy source for many autotrophs like alga...
How much plastic do you think our world uses each year? In “Trim Your Waste”, the author, Sharon Kelly, provides more than sufficient details, amazing language skills, and just the right structure to put it all together to convey the ever so clear central idea. Kelly shows us in her text that she believes that through just a few minor changes in our daily life, we can save our planet, one step at a time.She uses the three significant devices, structure, language, and details to convey to the reader exactly what she means by all of this madness.
Water bottles are made of what is called completely recyclable polyethylene terephthalate plastics, in short PET, they photo degrade, so they break down into smaller fragments over a very long period of time. The remainder of it is left over there and are eventually eaten by marine animals and birds. Plastic bottles and plastic bags are the most prevalent form of pollution found on our beaches and in our oceans every square mile of the ocean has over 46,000 pieces of floating plastic in it. Ten percent of the plastic manufactured worldwide ends up in the ocean, the majority of that are found on the ocean floor where it will never degrade.. There is garbage patch twice the size of Texas in the North
Have you ever seen trash island? This is an island that is made out of non-biodegradable plastic and other trash. It floats in the Pacific ocean about 100 miles from the coast of California. The objects that float in the island cause a huge threat to wildlife including sea turtles and sharks. This has already caused a mass extinction in some types of plankton and fish. Today it is a huge problem. Will there ever be a solution?
Since the 1960s when plastic bottles were widely distributed, there have been several negative externalities resulting from their consumption and disposal. Flooding landfills and leaking into water supplies, debris fortified with chemicals that are often ingested by marine life, harmful emissions caused by its incineration, and the difficulty of recycling are just a few of the negative externalities that costs millions in. About 4 percent of the world’s oil production is used as raw materials to fuel the machines that make plastics, and people all over the world are exposed to chemicals from plastic several times each day through the air, dust, water, food and use of consumer
The world population is living, working, and vacationing along the coasts. They are contributing to an unprecedented tide of plastic waste. Pollution is defined as the process that alters a substance or molecule on planet earth, the pollution is caused by the physical contact of an organic decaying particle with a clean particle in the same spot, at the time the two particles join together is when occurs pollution in which the environment is greatly altered. Too many, plastic is a modern day miracle, versatile, inexpensive and durable (Rochman 2014). To others, it is a scourge, a non-degradable pollutant that threatens to choke the global environment. Plastic pollution has led to the deaths of many animals, natural resources, and people (Rochman 2014). It is time to change America’s thinking and to learn from past mistakes.
It is sad to say but humans have played their part in deteriorating the earth. We have polluted and killed the very thing that takes care of us. If you ride by any lake or river you find trash and debris around it. In the “The Call of the Wild” the author says that we have committed war against the earth by the dumping of poisons and explosives upon it (337). Unfortunately, plastics are the things that are doing the most harm to our environment. Plastics are convenient and we use them everyday and these are the things that we find in the oceans, rivers and lakes. They are harmful to the earth as well as human health by directly intoxicating us with lead, cadmium and mercury. Plastic debris laced with harmful chemicals are often found inside of our marine life and can poison them. Plastic can survive for thousands of years and many invasive species are found in them which can disrupt our habitats. We need to limit our consumption of plastics and make sure that they are disposed of in their proper places.
It is undeniable that plastic has become a part of human lives all around the world. Plastic has been one of the most essential commodities when Alexander Parkes created it in 1852 (Kulbhushaan, 2011, 4). Chris, the member of Earthsave Canada, said that it seems nearly impossible to escape plastic in our daily life and we cannot escape plastic pollution, either (2008, 5). Although it is one of the most essential commodities, there is no doubt that using plastic has its own set of disadvantages. Plastic pollution involves the accumulation of man-made plastic products in the environment that adversely affect wildlife or humans (Moore, 2015, internet). In order to evidently discuss plastic pollution, this report will interpret more details on