Faith Davidson
May 20 2015
John Hughes
Plastic pollution in our oceans
One of the many environmental issues is the amount of plastic that is polluting our oceans. Some people recycle their plastic, some just toss it away and it ends up in landfills and then there is the loose plastic that ends up in our oceans. We need to figure out a way to keep the plastic out of our oceans.
There is a pile of plastic and garbage floating around the ocean the width twice the size of Texas and a length of 90 ft. Now how are we supposed to get rid of all that plastic? There are people who go out and get what they can out of the oceans but there is just too much plastic it's going to take years to get all of the plastic out. Did you know it takes 500 to 1,000 years for plastic to degrade, and 46% of plastic floats and it can drift for years before it concentrating in the ocean gyres.
The sea life is affected tremendously 44% of all sea birds, 22% of cetaceans, and all turtle species and growing list of fish have been recorded with plastic in or around their bodies. There is around one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals are killed annually from plastic in the ocean. The animals think the plastic is food and they try to eat it so they die from choking on the plastic or intestinal blockage, or just starvation because there is nothing but plastic.
How can we fix this? Well, first of all we can make sure the plastic never reaches the ocean. We can recycle more, stop littering and clean our beaches. We can use fabric bags when shopping instead of plastic bag. There are plenty of way we can reduce the amount of plastic we use in our everyday lives. We just need to make the effort to keep our home clean and plastic free.
May 20 2015
John Hughes
Plastic pollution in our oceans
One of the many environmental issues is the amount of plastic that is polluting our oceans. Some people recycle their plastic, some just toss it away and it ends up in landfills and then there is the loose plastic that ends up in our oceans. We need to figure out a way to keep the plastic out of our oceans.
There is a pile of plastic and garbage floating around the ocean the width twice the size of Texas and a length of 90 ft. Now how are we supposed to get rid of all that plastic? There are people who go out and get what they can out of the oceans but there is just too much plastic it's going to take years to get all of the plastic out. Did you know it takes 500 to 1,000 years for plastic to degrade, and 46% of plastic floats and it can drift for years before it concentrating in the ocean gyres.
The sea life is affected tremendously 44% of all sea birds, 22% of cetaceans, and all turtle species and growing list of fish have been recorded with plastic in or around their bodies. There is around one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals are killed annually from plastic in the ocean. The animals think the plastic is food and they try to eat it so they die from choking on the plastic or intestinal blockage, or just starvation because there is nothing but plastic.
How can we fix this? Well, first of all we can make sure the plastic never reaches the ocean. We can recycle more, stop littering and clean our beaches. We can use fabric bags when shopping instead of plastic bag. There are plenty of way we can reduce the amount of plastic we use in our everyday lives. We just need to make the effort to keep our home clean and plastic free.