Importance Of Recycling And Recycling

Plastic Beaches and Wounded Turtles – Why America Needs Recycling Imagine wanting to start your well-deserved vacation by going to the beach, but instead of being welcomed by blue water and white sand, all you see is piles of trash and plastic on the ground. This is not just an imaginary situation; Hawaii’s plastic beach, commonly known as Kamilo Beach, is covered in trash and washed up debris. The trash is made up of 90 percent plastic and can reach up to three meters high. While it is certainly not a beautiful sight, the trash on the beach also contaminates the water and results in death if ingested by animals. To eliminate pollution through plastic, the American government has to intensify its efforts to enforce recycling in the United States. Plastic has an extreme impact on the environment. Trash, consisting of paper or organic waste, decomposes after a while, unlike plastic in which one plastic bottle takes from 450 up to 1000 years to decompose. Considering that the United States produces over 300 million tons of plastic a year, most of which is only used once and then thrown away, it is clear that pollution will become worse each year. It becomes even more shocking when this number is put in other terms; 300 million tons of plastic is comparable to the weight of all the adults living on the planet. By not

For example, a video of a turtle with a plastic straw stuck in its nostril recently surfaced and evoked an outcry from animal welfare groups. In the video, a marine biologist tries to remove the straw out of the turtles’ nostril, which takes about fifteen minutes. This obviously causes pain to the turtle because of the amount of force the biologist uses to remove the straw. Other videos and images of birds that died from starvation due to plastic rings and cans being stuck in their beaks show the severity of this