Plastic Water (Revision)

Imagine large amounts of aqua blue water that goes on for miles and miles. The type of pretty blue water that you imagine yourself going to vacation in: to sail, to deep-sea fish, to scuba dive while observing all the beautiful tropical fish that gracefully swim around. Now picture that post-card-like scenery, with the world’s largest dump right in the center of it.
There is a large area of the central Pacific Ocean that no one ever visits and barley anyone passes through (Moore). The Eastern Garbage Patch, also named the Pacific Trash Vortex is that area in the Pacific Ocean in which there are tons and tons of debris. This patch is over ten million square miles, which is about the size of Africa (Moore). This rubbish patch floats within the North Pacific and it has an enormously high amount of plastic and other debris trapped within the currents. There are circular winds that produce circular ocean currents which spiral into a center where there is a slight down- welling of water almost as if it were a hurricane. Anything that floats no matter which part of the ocean it comes from ends up here, possibly after drifting for years and years. A lot of this debris is eventually broken down by microorganisms into carbon dioxide and water (Moore). We, as human beings, have created a product that is nearly impossible to be deteriorated. These are plastics. Most of the debris in this garbage patch happens to be plastic bottles, plastic bags, fishnets, clothing, lighters, and other man-made items. Plastics are now almost everywhere in our society. We drink out of them, we eat off of them, we sit on them, we package things in them, and more importantly, plastic is affordable for everyone (Kostigan). But believe it or not, they are one of the most harmful products to our environment.
Why is plastic so harmful to our environment? Think about it, if all this plastic in this “garbage patch” does not biodegrade or deteriorate, where does it go? It photo- degrades - a process in which it is broken down by sunlight into smaller and smaller pieces, all of which are still plastic polymers, eventually becoming individual molecules of plastic, still too tough for anything to digest (Moore). It is not just the indigestion that is the problem, the pieces of plastic that are floating around in the water turn into plastic polymers which are oily toxics that don’t dissolve in water and accumulate up to one million times the level of these poisons that are already floating in the water. They just might be called second- generation toxics (Moore 2002).
How can we as humans help to reduce or eliminate this negative impact plastic has put on our environment? It starts with the desire of wanting to make the world a cleaner and healthier place, and someone willing to take a stand. Starting on the west coast and over seas in other countries, cities have begun to ban the use of plastic shopping bags and have decided to use more eco-friendly products as a substitute. San Francisco and Los Angeles have taken their stand and will start the ban of plastic bags beginning July 1st, 2010, hopefully it gives customers and whom ever may shop at these given stores that extra incentive to want to change and not use plastic bags any more because stores are now giving those customers that don’t use plastic bags either a discount off of there purchase or more importantly their helping change the world into a more eco- friendly place to live.
You may not believe that a single person can change the outlook of today’s society, but in some cases this is true. For instance, if people all across the world start to change their ways and find other ways to substitute for the plastic, then its going to fall on others and that may give them the reasons they need to start to cut back on what is ruining today’s society. There are obvious reasons as to why people need to start watching how much plastic they, first off, there already banning the use of plastic bags in various parts of the world, and also the “garbage patch” is a big enough reason in itself. One problem that we may encounter is that people might know how big this issue really is. If people were more educated as to what the plastic is slowing doing to our earth, then I believe that there would be no problem in helping save the environment.
We depend on plastic way too much I believe, there are other resources that can be used as a substitute instead of plastic and have a more positive impact on today’s environment and I feel as though that’s what we should be striving for. I believe we have a foundation established with other cities already beginning to head in a positive direction. As mentioned above, Los Angeles and San Francisco have imposed a ban on plastic bags and I feel as though this is a start to a bright future for our environment as well as our nature and wildlife.