Plastic is Filling Up Our Oceans. We Need to Act FAST!

The world has produced more than 18.2 trillion tons of plastic since the 1950's; that is equal to one trillion four hundred fifty-six billion school buses. By 2050 the population will rise to 9 billion people, and with that, comes more plastic. By that time, there will be more in the ocean than fish. Right now, the plastic count in the ocean is one piece of plastic per every three fish. In 32 years though, the plastic count will be three pieces of plastic per every three fish. That is one piece of plastic per every sea animal in the ocean! Plastic isn’t just a solid material, some plastics have harmful chemicals like BPA, or Bisphenol A that can leach into water or other substance that you are consuming. BPA causes many health defects to humans, such as Vitamin D deficiency, obesity, and various types of deadly cancer. BPA can even cause infertility in women, meaning that they won't ever be able to give birth. Even if a plastic product is labeled as BPA free, it's really not. Plastic manufacturers just use other chemicals that replace BPA, and these chemicals are just as dangerous as BPA is, if not even more risky.

Plastic is also not biodegradable which means that it will never really "go away," plastic just gets broken down into really tiny pieces by the sun’s UV rays. These tiny pieces of plastic eventually get into the ocean. These pieces are called nurdles. This sounds like a cute name, right? Well it's not. To humans, our food and water gets filtered, which means that the plastic just disappears, but to marine life, it’s a death sentence. The animals will unknowingly swallow the tiny particles, thinking that they are food, and this will slowly kill them. This is not only a major problem to marine life, it is also one of us too. According to The Guardian, there are more than 11,000 plastic fragments found in fish and other marine life each year, including the ones we consume. Fish that we eat, such as salmon or tuna ingest the plastic, it stays in their system even after death, which means we are also ingesting the chemical-infused plastic. There is now so much plastic in the ocean that we can no longer clean it up, the only way for us to solve this issue is by decreasing the usage of plastic.

We as consumers can stop plastic pollution by not buying items with plastic wrapping or plastic micro-beads, this will lessen the profit that large companies make forcing them to change their ways. The power is not in the president’s hands, but ours, we are the root of this issue and we are going to fix it. Take a stand. If you want your kids, grandchildren, and loved ones to have a good life, start taking efforts to clean up plastic pollution now! Remember, we are the United States. We guide the world. We show them the right way to do things. We are role models. Now, we lead the world. Instead of just talking, let’s act. Let’s show people how to live a modern life without plastic, without trashing our planet.

For more information, watch A Plastic Ocean, a documentary on Netflix.