Ocean Home Of Plastics Summary

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Ocean, Home of Plastics Passing through an aisle of a regular supermarket, customers will observe that most of the products in there are made of or packed with the base material plastic. Usually, the bag that will be used to carry the products bought from the supermarket will also be made of plastic. It is important to consider that every piece of plastic that has ever been created still exists today in some structure. A study from the World Economic Forum and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation anticipated that if plastic production continues as ongoing rates, and with improper disposals, by the year 2050, the oceans will have more plastic wastes than fish. Although plastic is a material that benefits every individual, the overproduction of plastics …show more content…

In fact, it is considered that there are only six types of plastics, because the seventh is a mixture of the previous six. The types of plastics are identified by their resin code, which is a small triangle with a number in it, that can be found at the bottom of a plastic container (CalRecycle 1). In the article “Learning About the Types of Plastic Wastes: Effectiveness of Inquiry Learning Strategies”, the author, Wing-Mui Winnie So, claims that to identify a type of plastic, we should calculate the density of the unknown plastic or verify if it contains a number in the resin identification code. Each plastic has a different recyclability, but the resin code does not imply that the plastic is recyclable; in fact, most types of plastics cannot be recycled. “Just 14% is recycled, some is landfilled” (Tunnicliffe 1). The resin identification is mainly used to classify plastics; however, it helps in recycling because, in the recycling process, plastics are divided by their resin code. Furthermore, most of the remaining plastic waste ends up in oceans. This explains the enormous number of 8 million tons of plastic waste dumped into the oceans each …show more content…

Pollution in the form of plastics put many marine species in danger of extinction. During the 1970s, environmental scientists discovered that many seals were losing their lives due to plastic waste entangling with their bodies; in fact, after 30 years, a report showed that the population of Northern Fur Seals was reduced by fifty percent (Amaral 2). Marine organisms are not in danger of plastics just because of entanglement, as stated that “thousands of seabirds and sea turtles, seals and other marine mammals are killed each year after ingesting plastic or getting entangled in it” (Biological Diversity 2). Therefore, it is clearly understood that the ingestion of plastics in oceans does not only affect marine organisms, but also birds appear to be in danger. The plastic pollution in oceans, also immensely affects human beings. Food chain plays an important role when plastics are found inside marine organisms. When the marine organisms erroneously ingest the plastic debris, its toxins enter their bodies; in addition, as plastics split into several fragments, it discharges extremely toxic chemicals such as BPA, which are then introduced into the food chain (Biological Diversity 3). This affects a human being when the individual ingests a seafood that is contaminated with the toxins of

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