The truth behind plastic!
Almost everything today is made of plastic. But most people don’t know how bad plastic really is. “Bad for what,” you ask? Well, plastic in the United States is produced at massive rates. The U.S. alone produces 115 billion pounds of plastic every year. That’s a crazy number. This year in my science class we watched a documentary called Plastic Paradise, which by the title you can probably tell was all about plastic.
Watching the documentary had a huge impact on how I view the effect of disposable plastic on the world. After watching, I started to become constantly aware of what plastic I used and how I used it. For my DOT (Do One Thing) project I have decided to stop using single use plastic (aka plastic you use once and then throw away). That basically means no more candy for the next month and I have a really big sweet tooth. In the last three days we have been doing our baseline (which is collecting data on our normal habits before we actually start the project). I have eaten 2–4 mini chocolate candies every night. Each individually wrapped in plastic.
I hope that by reducing the amount of plastic I use I will also be able to help the environment. I can help save the lives of animals. If you didn’t know, a lot of the trash you throw away ends up in the ocean (as seen in the picture above). This means that “stupid” fish eat the plastic by mistake or on purpose — you never know (I don’t know why they try to kill themselves). These days giant fishing nets are mostly made out of plastic. Plastic fishing nets make up 10 percent of all marine litter, or about 705,000 tons. That’s a whole lot of fishing nets. These fishing nets don’t just catch fish but other marine animals such as dolphins and seals. When thrown away these nets catch on to coral reefs and break them. This really hurts the ocean because coral reefs are known as the center of the ocean. During my four weeks of being disposable plastic-free, I am going to face many challenges but hopefully I succeed.
Don’t forget to check in next week for an update on week 1 of my project.
Elena
