Diluzio_Don't+Worry

= = **Don't Worry About Plastics?**



//Plastics are created and produce waste, then they are used for a short amount of time and given to the Earth. The plastics are made to last, so they stay, perhaps breaking up into bite size pieces, and nature attempts to adapt to them. Animals become deformed water sources become toxic, wildlife ingests the plastics and eventually die from them. Trash from one part of the world is pushed to another part of the world, but never gone. Your trash ends up somewhere, it does not go away, and it will come back to bite you.//

Well... What about plastics?
Plastics are designed and produced with the knowledge that they will end up in landfills, lakes, rivers, oceans, and find its way into the food chain. Even the plastics that are thrown away "responsibly", i.e. are intended to be recycled or spend a millenia in a landfill, can end up falling off trucks, being swept away by storms, and otherwise finding their way into the streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans.

According to the National Academy of Sciences approximately 45,000 metric tons of plastic are discarded at sea annually **in 1975** [5]. According to Marcus Eriksen, co-founder of a non-profit studying garbage in the ocean, [|5 Gyres], when asked about the rate of plastic pollution in the sea;

//"We're not seing significant increases in plastic density in the North Atlantic. Check out the work of Sear Education in the Journal of Science, where they compared 22 years of sampling the [North Atlantic] gyre,; We know there's more plastic going in [and] we think it's washing up on islands, the natural nets in the gyres: as the gyres accumulate and circulate floating debris, much of it washes ashore on islands in their path. If we turn off the tap of plastic pollution to the ocean, the gyres will rid themselves of plastic" [8]//

When asked about the current efficiency of recycling of plastics, Marcus Eriksen replied,

//"In most communities across the United States, plastic water bottles, soda bottles, milk jugs and detergent bottles are selected from the waste stream for recycling because they are high value plastics. The rest is either burned, buried or exported. It all comes down to economics. For many towns and cities, it's easier to send a ton of plastic to China than to the local landfill." [8]//

"The Center for Marine Conservation has been coordinating coastal cleanups since 1986. ... During the 1993 coastal cleanup, over 3.1 million pounds of trash [1550 tons] was collected--more than half of that was plastic."[7]

Three main sources of plastic marine pollution are buried garbage on land that is washed into the sea by a storm, people who dump plastic garbage into the sea, and plastic products inadvertently left behind on decks of ships. [6]

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a gyre of marine litter, estimated to be twice the size of Texas. This patch of sludge and debris is not visible via satellite images due to the very small size of the individual pieces that it consists of, as well as the fact that the majority of the contents float just beneath the surface. [6]

It is calculated from differential equations that with no salvaging of the pollution, the ocean will not be able to hold any more garbage by 2030. With taking into account an area of approximately 3.6 million km^2 cleaned up each year, the ocean's garbage gyre's will reach a steady state by 2060. This is based on annual emissions of plastic reaching 32,397,273,47 tons by steady state in 2060. According to this model, which also compares the cost of taxing plastic production to the cost of salvaging plastic, the model suggests that the losses suffered by taxes are significantly more then the amount of money that would be spent on salvaging the plastic garbage. [6]

Why Worry?
Plastic pollution can become a sponge for the many hydrophobic pollutants that are in the oceans, absorbing the toxins such as persistent organic pollutants[POPs], like PCBs and DDT. These plastics breakdown into microplastics, which are then eaten by the marine wildlife. The toxins are then reabsorbed into the fish, and accumulate, making their way up the food chain. The effects on humans are still unknown.[8]

The photograph above, located bottom right, is of a decomposed baby albatross, that was fed plastic litter by confused parents, on the Midway Islands near the heart of the Pacific Trash gyre. These islands are more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent, possibly the furthest you could get away from the source of the plastics. The photographer, Chris Jordan, backs this up with additional photographs, of the all too common site. The chicks are raised on this diet and inevitably die from starvation, toxicity, or choking. Due to low mating frequency and a practice of mating for life, harming the population of albatross here is greatly endangering their global population. Other factors, such as over fishing, hunting, and invasive species also play a part.[1]

What can be done?
Plastics are a major contributor of pollution, yet our society is dependent of plastics, in much the same way we are dependent on fossil fuels. Bio-plastics and Eco-plastics have been in development and are making progress, but petroleum based plastics are still the most widely used and easiest to mass produce. Plastics that degrade faster, and do so in a sustainable way, are what is needed in our society.

Although laws against pollution are becoming more standard, society should not rely on laws to dictate their behavior on this matter. It should be conscious and willing decision to consume less, and to consume responsibly. Through awareness campaigns, volunteer cleanup efforts, and being aware that we, as consumers, are the driving force behind the corporations that produce the pollutants, the marine pollution problem can still be adverted.


 * Sources:**
 * 1) Chris Jordan, //An Ocean of Plastic... In Birds' Guts,// []
 * 2) Encyclopedia Britannica Online, Plastic Pollution: Plastic in a river, Jakarta, Indonesia, 2007, []
 * 3) Natural~Specialty Foods Memo: Green Memo Feature: Scientific Evidence From the Lands and From The Oceans Suggests it's Time to Solve the Plastics Waste issue, []
 * 4) 5 Gyres - Understanding Plastic Pollution Through Exploration, Education, and Action []
 * 5) //Marine Birds and Plastic Pollution//, Marie Y. Azzarello & Edward S. VanVleet, Department of Marine Science, University of South Florida, 140 Seventh Avenue South, St. Petersburg, Florida 33701, USA, []
 * 6) //Simulation & Prediction of Pacific Plastic Pollution//, Cao Li, Yu Xu, YiShi Xu, XuSheng Kang, Applied Mechanics and Materials Vols, 50-51 (2011) pp 890, []
 * 7) //Plastics in Our Oceans//, Kimberly Amaral,[| http://www.whoi.edu/science/B/people/kamaral/plasticsarticle.html]
 * 8) //South Pacific Islands Survey - Student Questions from SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN//, Lindsey Hoshaw, May 23, 2011, []