Plastics, like diamonds are forever

Many may think that their actions in today’s environment may not have an impact on the world as a whole. Well the latest statistics show that the littering and trash that’s being thrown is growing and growing each day. There could be some help from others as well if you see someone in the environment freely throwing trash on the ground, then it is in your right to say something to that person and if you don’t then it falls on your behalf for not helping that person and our environment out. Thousands and thousands of animals in the wildlife are being affected by the trash that every person throws on the ground daily. The one place that all that trash is going is in the Pacific Ocean. The Eastern Garbage Patch, also named the Pacific Trash Vortex is an area in the Pacific Ocean in which there are tons and tons of debris in a certain area. The patch has an enormously high amount of plastic and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the north pacific. Studies have shown that nearly 80% of the garbage that has been collected comes from land- based sources and 20% from ships at sea(Moore 2002). The debris that makes up most of the patch is being brought in from the eats coast of Asia to the center of the patch in about a year or so. Let’s not get this confused with anything else, the problem is not that it’s a patch, that it’s the size of a continent, and its filling up with toxic waste and a six to one ratio between pounds of waste and every one plankton.

Most of the floating debris is being consumed up in the stomachs of sea turtles, black- footed albatross and other creatures of that nature. One significant reason as to why so many animals are being killed in the water is because all of the floating debris is absorbing organic pollutants from the sea water, including PCB’s, DDT, and PAHs. Along with the toxic affects, when ingested, most are mistaken by the endocrine system as estradrol causing the animal to have hormone disruption (Moore 2002). These tiny plastic pellets have been found to accumulate up to a million times the level of these poisons that are floating in the water itself. These are not like heavy metal poisons that affect the animal that ingests them directly, they just might be called second- generation toxic (Moore 2002).
We can find plastic anywhere now a days in our society. We use plastic for all types of things such as, cups because we drink out of them; we eat off of them, there just so durable and cheap and made for anything. But these all of these useful things that we come to find out about plastic are the same exact reasons why their harmful to our environment (Moore 2002). Plastic, that’s all there is, so much plastic that it might be there forever. The plastic goes through a process called photo-degrade. The plastic is broken down by the sunlight into smaller and tinier pieces, many of them still have polymers which then make the plastic into individual molecules of plastic and too tough to digest. There has been much talk and chit chat about going on a nationwide ban of plastic bottles all together. I feel as if we did that, then we would be on our way to reducing the size of the mass that’s in the Pacific Ocean. Having a nationwide ban would eliminate a lot of things but also bring forward some issues that we will need to handle. 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.