Greenhouse Gasses, Global Warming, and Microplastics

What is happening in the sea that is hurting the world

By: Alex B.

 Do you know where the trash you throw out goes? You may be thinking about a dump, or it may be incinerated, but a sizable portion of it goes into the ocean where it does not belong. This affects everything in the world even though you might not know it. There are many reasons why we need to wake up to the fact that what we are doing to Earth needs to be fixed.

 You may have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and you may have seen pictures of it, but it is a lot worse if you look under all of that. A study by scientists in the UK found that there can be up to 1.9 million pieces of microplastics per square meter under the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. “Almost everybody has heard of the infamous ocean ‘garbage patches’ of floating plastic, but we were shocked at the high concentrations of microplastics we found in the deep-seafloor,” said Ian Kane, a researcher at the University of Manchester. This goes to show that a lot more has gone into the ocean than we first thought, and it’s getting worse. Scientists have found plastics in more than 114 different marine species, and animals are increasingly showing up on beaches, dead, with plastic all around them.

Garbage was first noticed in the ocean in the 1970s and has just been growing as we dump more and more in. Plastic is used so much because of its flexibility, strength, and occasionally its transparency.  Just think of how many packaging materials you throw out after you use them, or that non-refillable plastic pen, or the straw of the juice box you drink. Some of it gets thrown in a land dump, and some gets burned up, but a good portion of it goes into the ocean. All of these common items are constantly being thrown away. Just think of one of the pencil boxes you got from Staples, and think of how many other people got that same thing in the U.S. Imagine how many boxes that would be. And then picture that same amount around the whole world getting thrown out in one day. “Plastic is one of the most persistent pollutants on Earth. It's made to last - and it does, often for 400 years or more. And at every step in its lifecycle, even long after it has been discarded, plastic creates greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to the warming of our world.”

It’s not just the people that live on solid land that contribute to the pollution of the oceans. Many fishing industries have contributed 18% of the plastic in the ocean. Some of the fishing items made of plastic include, netting, bait boxes, and traps. There are about 4.6 million fishing boats, and many of them drop random items over the side, like broken fishing nets, plastic bags used for lunches and many other things.

Microplastics, microlitter, and harmful waste we throw out without a thought could very well be killing one more baby turtle, or a coral reef that was home to cute fish and animals. Do not turn your heads away from pollution. It’s real, and if we do something about it, we could make the Earth habitable for quite possibly another billion years!