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Harmful effects of plastic
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What are environmental humanities? It is an area of research that speaks about many environmental issues that have emerged in the humanities over time in society. Waste is a prominent issue that exists in environmental humanities. Honestly, human waste is something I 've underestimated. It 's a tremendous display of our consumptive society. Yet, all the more crushing is the way that human waste is an extreme worldwide issue that everybody ignores in light of the fact that it 's hasty impacts are concealed, not at all like the tragedies that are much of the time broadcasted by the media. This can also be interpreted as slow violence. The definition of slow violence is violence that takes place gradually and is often invisible and can affect …show more content…
Slow violence is a severe problem in the world today and this can be shown in the documentaries Plastic Cow, E-Wasteland and Chris Jordan’s photograph and film Midway: Message and the Gyre Project and the paper “Wasted Humans and Garbage Animals: Deadly Transcorporeality and Documentary Activism” by Chia-ju Chang. Especially living in the United States in the exceedingly developed city of New York it is hard to envision the kind of problems and hindrances, garbage, is affecting people living on the other side of the world and especially be responsible for that same problem. The paper and documentaries all emphasize the harms linked with acts of slow violence like toxins that get released into the environment, carelessness for waste workers and the effect on animals.
Slow violence isn’t just normal garbage; electronic waste also goes into that category. This is something we humans are very connected
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The film and picture proves to us that garbage isn’t just on land but also in our ocean. Here, albatrosses are affected because they are eating plastic dumped in the ocean mistaking it for food. This is clearly slow violence because of the serious plastic problem. Although it doesn’t seem like an issue, but in a large scale, it is. Some believe if one recycles, the problem goes away, but the reality is, the majority of plastics go un-recycled. Plastic isn’t easily degradable, and they break down into small pieces. Sooner or later, the plastic ends up at sea. And animals like albatrosses are eating them and partaking a slow and painful death. Looking into further research, more and more animal deaths are recorded and they are due to plastic. Marine animals are at risk since there is so much plastic at sea. Every day researchers are finding tons of plastics in sharks, whales, turtles, to name a
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the largest garbage dump in the world. According to estimates made by experts, the patch holds approximately three and a half million tons of garbage. Majority of this garbage is made of plastic. This waste is a threatening problem to the patch’s surrounding wildlife. Many animals are caught in the floating pieces of trash and it is the cause of the deaths of about one million birds and about one hundred thousand other sea animals. Due to the oceans nature and constant moving currents, the trash is also constantly moving. Therefore the size of the patch never stays the exact same. However, scientists believe it be approximately two times the size of Texas. The plastic is mostly broken down from larger materials into small pieces. The patch has been referred to as one scientist as a, “plastic soup”. This garbage poses such a threat mainly because it does not biodegrade. These plastics will be in the ocean essentially forever. Many plastics also contain chemicals, and absorb other chemicals and pollutants they become exposed to. These newly absorbed toxins are then leaked and distributed back into the ocean over time. The chemicals can directly enter the bodies of the animals which consume them. A study was being conducted by scientists of the fish that inhabit the area around the patch. What the researchers found inside the belly of one fish (that was no larger in size than that of a finger), was eighty four small fragments of plastic. It does not take scientists to recognize the impact of this problem, Zach Gold, who is sixteen, is from Santa Monica California. Zach enjoys s...
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 &
First I will summarize an excerpt out of Heather Roger's essay, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage published in 2005. Second I will summarize Lars Eighner essay On Dumpster Diving published in 1995. Our government needs to immediately enforce a set of strict standardized laws that carefully regulate and monitor the disposal of todays and more importantly tomorrow trash. I will argue that this is necessary for large corporations and businesses to deduce their consumption. Finally I will argue that we need to educate the public about the importance and need to restrict our consumption to secure our future.
Recently, an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean was found to be polluted with 38 million pieces of plastic that had been carried over by currents (Wang, “No one lives on this remote Pacific island”). The island, dubbed ‘trash island’, is home to diverse animal populations that have all been devastated by the pollution. On the beach, hundreds of birds were seen dead by reporters and scientists. When analyzed, the primary cause of death turned out to be consumption of plastic. When animals ingest plastic, it clogs their stomach and poisons their body with toxic chemicals. These toxic chemicals cause an array of issues, such as reproductive and endocrine problems. Eventually, this leads to death (Knoblauch, “The environmental toll of plastics”). But due to the nature of plastics, it can take hundreds or even thousands of years to completely degrade, meaning that as plastic pollution continues to build up, more places like ‘trash island’ will be discovered. According to conservation scientist Alex Bond, “…[The island] is just an indicator of what’s floating around out there” (Wang, “No one lives on this remote Pacific
Imagine yourself in the middle of a rainforest, listen to the sounds around you, smell the fresh air, hear the wildlife; take that image and get rid of the trees around you, the sounds of wildlife, and the smell of fresh air. Instead of a rainforest you are now in the middle of a seemingly endless sea of trash and waste. The fresh scent in the air gone, the sprawling land of greenery and trees gone, and the sounds of the forest is reduced to the sound of heavy machinery trying vainly to reduce trash into smaller more compact waste.
Environmental Studies is the academic field, which systematically studies human interaction with the environment in which we live in. It is a broad field of study that includes the natural environment, built environment, and the sets of relationships between them. Environmental studies takes into account many different factors that help provide an enjoyable, fruitful way of life, such as national policies, politics, laws, economics, sociology and other social aspects, planning, pollution control, natural resources, and the interactions of human beings and nature.
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...
In the article “Consumer Apocalypse: WALL-E,” Chris Barsanti explains that the planet “is a planet destroyed by overconsumption, aided and abetted by a sickening web of consumer-industrial-complex propaganda.” Amanda Yesilbas, Katharine Trendacosta, and Annalee Newitz echo this argument in the article, "13 Post-Apocalyptic Stories That Actually Teach Valuable Lessons," when considering the film Logan’s Run: they state, “garbage in, garbage out” which solidifies the idea that if we treat the earth like garbage, we will get garbage in return. Although there are many more examples, these films help connect the idea that nature and the environment are fragile things that must be cared for and not abused. They want to push the ideal of conservation in a subtle and fantastical way; making you stop and think of what could become of the planet if we do not take care of
Plastic or paper, is a choice that people face when going to the grocery stores. Plastic bags are often the choice that is made. A controversial issue in the world today is the use of plastic bags. Plastic bags are used because of the convenience they give, by being able to carry several items at once. However, in the article, “Banning Bans, Not Bags”, Jennifer Schultz claims, “Plastic bags clog up local waterways, litter roadways, and get swallowed up by unsuspecting fish” (6). Plastic bags are used once, then are discarded or, littered all over the place. When they are littered all over they become problems for more than just humans. These plastic bags pose a big hazard for animals on land and in especially the ocean. Humans eat land and
...n. Many American shares a common image of not living in a finite world and are used to exponential growth in almost all aspects of that a developed country would attempt to obtain positively. Though when comparing the United States to other countries around the world with the amount of garbage produced annually, we top the scales around two hundred and thirty-six million tons. Even japan, ranked third and half the size of America, has less then fifty-five million tons of garbage annually. (Forbes) As we continue to diminish our sources at alarming rate, people often forget the treatment and infrastructure required to manage all our garbage. The sad but inevitable process of wiping out forests and preserved land for more space for urban living hugely hurts not only American population but foreign companies who wish to do future international business in our country.
Environmental art is a genre of art that was established in the late 1960’s and it was created by things found in nature to make a piece of art. Some of the the environmental art would be so large in size, that it would be considered to be monumental. This kind of art can not be moved without destroying it, and the climate and weather can change it. There are many reasons why an artist would create an environmental work of art, such as : to address environmental issues affecting earth today, to show things that could be powered by nature or be interactive with natural phenomenon (like lighting or earthquakes), or to show how people can co-exist with nature, or maybe use it as a means to help restore ecosystems in an aesthetic way. (greenmuseum) Based on the artworks of Michael Heizer, Walter de Maria, and Robert Smithson, that have created and expanded the wonderful genre of environmental art. The major concepts underlying their art will define the roots of this genre throughout history.
Political ecology began in the 1960s as a response to the neglect of the environment and political externalities from which it is spawned. Political ecology is the analysis of social forms and humans organizations that interact with the environment, the phenomena in and affecting the developing world. Political ecology also works to provide critiques and alternatives for negative reactions in the environment. This line of work draws from all sorts of fields, such as geography, forestry, environmental sociology, and environmental history in a complex relationship between politics, nature, and economics. It is a multi-sided field where power strategies are conceived to remove the unsustainable modern rationality and instead mobilize social actions in the globalized world for a sustainable future. The field is focused in political ethics to refresh sustainability, and the core questions of the relationships between society and ecology, and the large impacts of globalization of humanized nature.
Although plastic bags appear to be fragile and light, their negative environmental effect is devastating. Plastic bags may cause large amounts of pollution in every step of their limited life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials, production, transportation, and recycling or disposal. Plastic bags can be defined as the most damaging form of environmental pollution. They can have a damaging effect on marine animals and wildlife in addition to the aesthetic effects on beaches, parks, and trees. Plastic bags are potentially one of the main causes of death to marine animals (Harbor keepers,2008). Up to one hundred thousand marine animals or more die each year from eating plastic bags which are mistaken for food. This can result in blocking the animal’s intestines and possibly lead to the animal’s death. Another possible situation is that wildlife, such as birds, can get tangled in plastic bags causing choking and immobility, which may eventually lead to death. (Senior, 2008) and (Citizen Campaign, 2010). In other situations, after plastic bags photo degrade they remain toxic and could be eaten by fish, shellfish or any other marine life and survive this allows the toxins to enter our food chain through bioaccumulation (Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, 2011).
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.
Environmental philosophy tries to make sense of the unexamined values, assumptions and ideologies behind humanities treatment of the environment and, in doing so, aims at helping to elicit an effective human response to related issues (Curry, 2011). Environmental philosophy, has gone beyond being merely an academic pursuit, now requiring the world’s population take moral responsibility for the damages caused by their industrial advances on natural systems.