Plastic Pollution
The Rundown
Plastic pollution is the accumulation in the environment of plastic objects and particles in our environment that have a negative impact on wildlife, habitats, ecosystems, and the human population. Plastic pollution is found in oceans, animals, rivers, and threatens our food safety and quality. According to an article by the AAAS, the United States was responsible for the largest amount of plastic waste of any country in the world. It equated to 42 Metric tons of plastic waste in just the United States alone.
An article by the International Union for Conservation of Nature explains a very clear explanation as to why plastic is so harmful. One of the writer’s states that plastic is a synthetic organic polymer that is made from petroleum that takes a very long time to degrade and leaves toxins. Plastic has properties ideally suited for packaging, building and construction, household and sports equipment, vehicles, electronics and agriculture. According to the article over 300 million tons of plastic are produced every year. Half of that plastic is then used to make shopping bags, cups, and straws. More than half of those items are discarded within less than a year and sent to landfills, oceans, or not even properly discarded at all. This causes a ripple effect in the issues that plastic pollution is responsible for. The crazy thing about plastic is that it is absolutely everywhere in absolutely everything. We use so much plastic in our everyday lives and we may not even know it. Plastic has been being made for so many years and we have yet to find a solution.
One of the major issues that plastic pollution is responsible for is ocean pollution. Ocean pollution effects more than just water contamination. It effects the fish that then has an effect and on us and the food that we eat. Plastic pollution in the ocean is responsible for the ingestion, suffocation, and entanglement of hundreds of marine species. Many animals mistake this plastic waste as prey and many of these animals die from starvation as well because their stomachs are full of plastic debris. This plastic can also act as poison in their bodies because the ingestion of this plastic can also lead to lacerations, infections, reduced ability to swim, and internal injuries. In the Oceans Plastics Diversity, they mention that fish in the North Pacific alone ingest 12,000 to 24,000 tons of plastic each year. Just in the North Pacific alone! They also mentioned that a recent study found that a quarter of fish found in markets from California had plastic in their guts. A lot of the plastic found in their guts were mostly in the form of plastic microfibers.
Plastic pollution is also a threat to our food safety and quality. In an article by the Plastic Pollution Coalition they state, plastic is one of the biggest contaminators in our food sources. Plastic contaminates and accumulates in food chains from many different groups such as, agriculture soils, terrestrial and aquatic food chains, and the water supply. All in which create new opportunities for human exposure. Long term exposure to plastic and the toxic substances that they release, they can really cause some major health issues to people such as: cancer, neurotoxicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity, impairment of the immune system, inflammation, genotoxicity, oxidative stress, apoptosis, and necrosis to just name a few. These are all some very serious health issues and yet plastic is in everything. We use some kind of plastic thing at the very least thirty times a day and most of us probably do not even stop to think about all the plastic products that we use a daily basis that a major impact on the world.
When you think about how far advanced, we are with technology and science and how long we have been dealing with this issue, you might be puzzled as to why we have yet to find a solution to the plastic pollution problem. The Global concern about plastic pollution has definitely been increasing over the years which brings more attention to the topic. More attention means more research and more research means more solutions. Recycling is one of the most popular and well-known solution when it comes to plastic pollution. However, that being said, not many people actually care to recycle or simply do not know how to. When I was in high school, my friends and I actually started a recycling program in our school, so when I say people do not care or simply do not know how to, I am not lying. I witnessed first-hand our recycling bags being mixed with the trash or people throwing non-recyclable items in the recycling bin simply because they were too lazy to walk an extra six feet. It was especially hard during this time to enforce something that was not an important topic to other people. Recycling has a lot of rules that can also be difficult for people to enforce. As an example, in our town of our high school we did not have anywhere local to take our recycled bags. We would have to drive the bags out of town to drop them off at a recycling location, so even if people want to, it is not always ideal for everyone. In support, The Complete Plastics Recycling Process tells you step by step about the rules and regulations of recycling. Another issue we experienced as a low funded school was actual recycle bags. You cannot use just regular trash bags. You have to have specific recycling bags for the cans and if the bag gets contaminated you have to throw the whole bag away which can become an expensive issue for a low-income school.
Despite the fact that recycling can be difficult there are many other steps we can take to reduce the daily use of plastic products. For example, you can replace plastic houseware products for glass, use reusable cups, utensils, napkins, and much more. In the article, Evaluating Scenarios Toward Zero Plastic Pollution, they state scenarios that they are trying to put in place to reduce plastic pollution which include reduce, substitute, recycle, and dispose which was a five-step scenario that they are researching. At the end of the day, until there is a mass solution to the issue, it is up to us to do as much as we can to help stop plastic pollution in order to save our planet, animals, and ourselves.
United Nations Environment Programme Secretariat of the Basel Convention, “Decision BC-14/13: Further actions to address plastic waste under the Basel Convention” (United Nations, 2018).
Thevenon, F., Carroll C., Sousa J. (editors), 2014. Plastic Debris in the Ocean: The Characterization of Marine Plastics and their Environmental Impacts, Situation Analysis Report. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN.
J. R. Jambeck, R. Geyer, C. Wilcox, T. R. Siegler, M. Perryman, A. Andrady, R. Narayan, K. L. Law, Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science 347, 768–771 (2015).
International Environmental Law (CIEL), Fueling Plastics: Plastic Industry Awareness of the Ocean Plastics Problem (2017), https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/ uploads/2017/09/Fueling-Plastics-PlasticIndustry-Awareness-of-the-Ocean-PlasticsProblem.pdf.
Center for Biological Diversity. “Ocean Plastics Pollution.” https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/ocean_plastics/index.html. Accessed 7 March 2021.
