At first, everybody thought that plastic was a great invention. A cheap material that is nearly undestroyable, light, and easy to work with. But the biggest advantage is also the biggest disadvantage at the same time: the undestroyability of plastic. It does rot really slowly, and the proper disposal is therefore really difficult.
The amount of plastic we, as humans, use is huge: in one year, 33 kilograms plastic waste per each inhabitant of the EU. This is approximately as heavy as 20 cantaloupe melons. Just imagine all the people in this world throwing away 20melons- pretty tragic, right?
Well, it really is. Thousands of sea creatures and seabirds are dying because of the amount of plastic waste in the ocean. Dolphins get caught in old fishnets; birds mistake little plastic pieces for their food; fish inhale micro plastics every day. Additionally, there is this special phenomenon called the trash vortex. The natural water flow in the ocean causes a gigantic gathering of plastic on the surface of the water. At this moment, the biggest garbage patch is around four times as big as France. It becomes clear that plastic waste is literally a huge problem.
But not only a problem for the animals as you could think for now. As humans are the cause of this problem they don’t get left out by the consequences. Within the process of
dissolving, toxic substances are getting released into the sea which then enter the food chain in this way and may therefore ultimately be dangerous to humans. These substances partly change hormone balance and genotype of animals and may also affect humans considering long terms.
Now you probably ask yourself if the ocean can’t balance this issue out in any way. But the sad answer is no. Because of its nature, plastic takes approximately 450 years to corrode. But even then, it does not fully disappear. It just breaks up into very, very small pieces called micro plastics. One plastic piece of 1 by 1 cm includes up to 1000 fragments of 1mm. I know that this is really hard to imagine, but I did not want to exclude these crazy numbers.
However, people are issuing this topic and searching for a solution or at least for a way to improve the current condition. For example, “the ocean cleanup”. It is a founding which tries to clean up the ocean as its name already says. They are developing systems to get rid of the floating plastic in the great pacific garbage patch. Their newest project is the creation of artificial coastlines, where there are none, to concentrate the plastic. A huge U-shaped barrier gets pulled through the ocean, where the plastic, but no animals, get caught in. Then they can efficiently remove the plastic from the ocean. This way it can get recycled and used again.
This is a huge project and the team of “the ocean cleanup” hopes to have a great impact on the current situation. But it does not always need to be a project of this size to improve any situation. That is also the case for this environmental issue with plastic waste. There are small things you can in cooperate in your daily life to save plastic waste- and thereby the ocean. For example, is it always helpful to use trash bins and not to leave your waste in nature. If you want to do a little
more, you can also even pick up the trash from others. Reusing your water bottles or plastic bags, or just not to buy things that are wrapped in huge amounts of plastic is also a great way to save some waste. Furthermore, you can do waste sorting, so that recycling becomes easier.
As you can see, these are very small things which take very little effort to do. But if everybody does something small, it can have a great impact.
So now that you know that plastic waste involves very serious consequences for nature, animals and even us as humans, I hope that I could convince you to change one or another little thing in your daily life to save some plastic waste. With that being said, I hope that you found my article interesting and that you learned something new today.
Sources:
https://www.watson.ch/leben/wissen/652787665-an-unserem-plastik-werden-selbst-noch-unsere-ur-ur-ur-ur-enkel-freude-hab (Pascal Scherrer, 16.09.2022)
https://aktivbewusst.de/plastikmuell-statistiken-deutschland-weltweit/ (Aktivbewusst.de, 16.09.2022)
https://www.kunststoffpark.ch/umgang-mit-kunststoff/vor-und-nachteile/ (kunststoffpark.ch, 16.09.2022)
https://theoceancleanup.com/oceans/ (The Ocean Cleanup Technologies B.V., 16.09.2022)
https://www.nabu.de/natur-und-landschaft/meere/muellkippe-meer/16794.html (NABU, 16.09.2022)