Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
Mack.O
Ms. Emma
Ms.Liz
8A Science
May 3, 2019
Plastic… It was once the pinnacle of human evolution that we just couldn’t get enough of but
now 50 years later our planet is drowning in it. Plastic has one of the largest impacts on our planet right
up there with climate change and world hunger. To put it in perspective we produce enough plastic every
year to create a thin layer of it around our whole planet TWO TIMES, or to put it in numbers, according
to Hannah Ritchie who wrote an article on how plastic is affecting our planet titled “PLastic Pollution”,
“With the largest population, China produced the largest quantity of plastic, at nearly 60 million tonnes.
oceans, the worse it is going to get. We need to act now if we want to get anywhere close to addressing
this soon to be crisis. Plastic has a massive impact on our planet because the annual amount produced by
the whole planet is out of control and almost all of it is getting discarded, millions of species of animals
are consuming it in some way and it is not only killing them but also finding its way into the tissue and
flesh of sea creachers, and lastly millions of tons of plastic is being dumped into our oceans and affecting
As of 2015 our world has produced 7.8 billion tons of plastic, that means that there is one ton of
plastic for every person alive today. This is a crazy amount of plastic and what's even crazier is that 8.8
million tons of this plastic gets dumped into the ocean every year (Ritchie). Because of this it is starting to
really pile up, it has even reached remote islands on Hawaii according to a National Geographic article
titled “Planet or Plastic”, “On Hawaii’s Big Island, on a beach that seemingly should have been
relatively unclear how long it takes plastic to biodegrade but a rough estimate would be around 450 years
to it never biodegrading. If your were to look at how much plastic was produced say, around 70 years ago
you would see that in 1950 the world produced only 2 million tonnes per year. Since then the annual
production has increased by 379 tons, reaching 381 million tonnes in 2015 ( Ritchie ). For context, this is
roughly equivalent to the mass of two-thirds of the world population. Plastic debris is almost found
everywhere, weather it's in the Arctic, our ocean, clogging drains in our cities, and it's now showing up in
National Parks and even on Mount Everest. One Article written by the GrrlScientist said that, “In 1992, a
shipping container filled with 28,000 “rubber” duckies was lost after it fell into the sea somewhere
between Hong Kong and the United States. To this day those plastic duckies still wash ashore every now
Mack 3
and then.” (GrrlScientist). Plastic production is out of control and affecting oceans and cities.
Plastic has a massive impact on our environment and will continue to if we don’t do something
about it. According to Parker, “Because plastic wasn’t invented until the late 19th century, and production
really only took off around 1950, we have a mere 9.2 billion tons of the stuff to deal with. Of that, more
than 6.9 billion tons have become waste. And of that waste, a
hear the word “recycle” it gives you a sense of hope that your
there have been improvements since then but nowhere near the in the percentage rage that they should be
Mack 4
( Parker ). When the plastic gets discarded it is dumped into the ocean, according to an article titled “How
is plastic damaging planet Earth” “To Sea Turtles plastic grocery bags under water can look like jellyfish,
or when it is floating on the surface can look like a snack to a seagull”(Johnston) Right now it is known
that marine litter harms more than 600 species, some scientist are calling this the beginning of the sixth
mass extinction of life on Earth. Plastic microparticles from cosmetics and microfibers get washed into
the sewage system, even though most pass through treatment plants and get the other particles passed out
some are caught up in sewage that is used to fertilize farmers’ fields. After this fertilizer dries out it can be
blown up by the wind and into the air. These microparticles can be very dangerous to humans according
to a Professor in environmental health, “Professor Frank Kelly, an expert in environmental health from
King’s College London, told a committee of MPs last year: “There’s a real possibility that some of those
microparticles will be entrained into the air and they will be carried around and we will end up breathing
them.”(Jontron). Some plastic is even entering the flesh of sea creatures, “Given plastic degrades to pieces
small enough to pass through the stomach into the flesh of fish and other animals, we are already eating
some of the plastic we have thrown into the sea.” ( Jontron) This means plastic has now entered our own
bodies and we are now having to digest plastic. Lasty according to the GrrlScientist, “ Plastic trash is
found in the guts of more than 90% of the world’s sea birds, in the stomachs of more than half of the
world’s sea turtles, and it’s even choking the life out of whales.” (GrrlScientist). Plastic it taking the lives
of millions of species and now might even be taking the lives of ours.
The plastic problem is big and world needs to find ways to improve the plastic situation. Hanna
Ritchie says “The first synthetic plastic — Bakelite — was produced in 1907, and is said to mark the
beginning of the global plastics industry.”( Ritchie) This industry has now become a crisis. You might not
Mack 5
see plastic as a crisis but it is, its taking over our world, killing
titles “A plastic love story” , “In 2007 San Francisco became the
first U.S. city to completely ban plastic grocery bags and after
footsteps.” (Freinhel 141). Some countries are taking initiative and doing things to improve the plastic
Norway, Italy, Costa Rica, Kenya and Peru. The US, China, Russia and Japan have not.” (Jontron) If you
were to just completely stop using plastic, while that might make you feel good about yourself it won’t
help in the large scale of things. What really needs to happen is we need to start by banning plastics like
grocery bags, straws, cups, water bottles, ect, and get people to use paper products as a replacement. The
next larger scale change would be looking at what industrial sectors use the most plastic and fins ways to
reduce the amount they use. The last and most likely largest scale improvement would be to ban together
as countries and find a ways to truly RE-USE as much of the plastic that is currently in our oceans and
incorporate it into production of things like tires, furniture, industrial material, cups, bottles, ect. We have
already surpassed the point of this problem being fixable, however there are improvements that can be
made to better our situation we just have to find ways to work together.
Plastic is a big issue right now it is something that we created thinking it would revolutionize the
way we package, produce, carry, and construct our products, instead of this we are now drowning in it
Mack 6
and it’s changing our planet fast and not for the better. First off we are producing so much plastic, too
much, as of 2015 we our world has produced around 9 billion tons of plastic (Johnston) That means there
is one tons of plastic for every person alive today. We have created so much plastic that we don’t know
where to put it all, this results in dumping most of it into the ocean. Most people think that when they
recycle all that plastic is reused, In reality and as of 2015 only about 20% of all plastic gets truly recycled
25.5% gets incinerated, and 55% still gets discarded (Parker). With all this plastic in the ocean sea
creatures get confused when they see a shiny piece of the stuff floating around in their home, many
species of birds, fuch, sea turtles, and many other animals will consume the plastic in some way. This can
look like being strangled by fishing nets or the plastic six pack rings. However most species are harmed
invisibly, for example a whale could slowly eating small to medium bits of plastic over a period of time
and then to experience internal problems or being cut on the inside of their body from the harder sharp
pieces of plastic.
Society is passed the point of being able to completely fix our aplastic crisis but we can take steps
in a effort to better our current situation. These can look like banning plastics like grocery bags, straws,
cups, water bottles, ect, and get people to use paper products as a replacement. Or looking at what
industrial sectors use the most plastic and fins ways to reduce the amount they use. The biggest and best
would be to ban together as countries and find a ways to truly RE-USE as much of the plastic that is
currently in our oceans and incorporate it into production of things like tires, furniture, industrial material,
cups, bottles, ect. Our plastic production and usage is truly a crisis and people need to realize that, we
can’t just keep dumping 8 million tons of plastic into the ocean every year, but what even more important
is that we are now consuming this plastic from the flesh of sea food that has it lasted into their tissue. We
have seen what plastic can do to animals just imagine what it will do to our bodies over the next 10 years,
GrrlScientist. “Five ways that Plastics harm the Environment( and one way they may help)”
Forbes, GrrlScientist, 23 April, 2018,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2018/04/23/five-ways-that-plastics-harm
the-environment-and-one-way-they-may-help/#3d3e2ac667a0.
Freinhel, Susan. PLastic a Toxic Love Story. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.
Images:
Overlooking plastic mound image:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/06/plastic-planet-waste-pollutio
n-trash-crisis/
How much plastic enters our oceans infographic:
https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution
Turtle image:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/plastic-trash-animals-photos_n_58ee9ec1e4b0b9e98
4891ddf
Clean Seas Act image:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAJk7K2d_A8
Information data graphs:
https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution