Elizabeth Knoll

Ms. Layson

English 11b

27 March 2019

Plastic Planet

One thing we can all agree on is plastic waste makes the environment look very bad. It

makes it look like it hasn’t been taken care of or just neglected in general. Some things that we

could improve upon is cleaning up the environment, cleaning up Earth’s oceans, possibly

producing less plastic, and protecting nature’s wildlife. What is needed to mainly be talked about

is China’s ban on plastic waste, the great pacific garbage patch, and the aquatic life in the oceans.

British chemist, Alexander Parkes, first introduced his ideas of synthetic plastic

compound Parkesine in 1862 at the London International Exhibition. Plastic is now a substance

used worldwide for packing materials, toys, bulletproof vests, carpet, golfballs, automobiles, etc.

Scientists, lawmakers, and activists have raised concerns for the amount of fossil fuels used for

plastic production. More than 79,000 tons of plastic constitute the bulk of the Great Pacific

Garbage Patch, roughly the size of Mongolia. The effort to recycle came up in the 1980s after the

Republic of China forid the import of plastic waste. The reduction of plastic waste has

challenged consumers because they have become so dependent on plastic. The popular single use

plastic usually becomes waste within a year with packaging, eating utensils, plates, beverage

bottles, drinking straws, coffee stirrers, and menstrual products. The lowe prices granted retailers

to provide bags with minimum concerns about cost while customers became accustomed with

the availability of the single use plastic. Too bad the plastic will take up a minimum of one
thousand years to fully decompose. On the other hand, several countries, such as Bangladesh,

China, and Rwanda, industrated a ban on certain plastics in the early twenty-first century. Rather

than outright ban plastic bags, many countries have put a fine on the plastic bags, for example,

the District of Columbia has put a 5 cent fee on every plastic bag received and all disposable

bags must be recycled. The improper disposal of plastic waste has become an increasing threat to

local wildlife and waters. Campaigns have also been launched to discourage plastic straws,

utensils, and takeout containers. Many manufacturers and retailers have also taken steps to

reduce waste. Many restaurants and bars have begun to use more eco friendly materials and

stopped offering plastic straws to customers unless they ask. Manufacturers have reacted to

concerns over plastic waste by developing more sustainable materials and creating more reusable

products (Plastic).

As of January first, 2016, china effectively banned the imports of plastic recyclables from

other countries. China took 51% of 15 million tons of plastic recyclables in global trade,

including a huge 40% of US citizens’ plastic recycling. Due to imbalances in factories, it’s much

cheaper for states to send their plastic waste abroad. The recyclables the US sends abroad is

low-quality and low-value, some contain toxic additives that threaten recycling workers’ health.

Some of the things we were sending over to China was non recyclable, which means they had to

dispose of it either by landfill or burning. China’s ban could possibly be the turning point for

global recycling, whereas the US is thinking about either burning the plastic they have or sending

it abroad to South and Southeast Asia. This would have catastrophic consequences for these

countries, which are not equipped to take on a downpour of foreign plastic and could also lead to

more plastic leakage into the ocean. Both of these tactics will not solve the out of control plastic
production. The US alone invested $164 billion in infrastructure expansion to produce more

plastic. Plastic production, in the US, would increase by ⅓ in as little as five years, and by 2050

the total volume of plastic produced 34,000 million tons-over four times what’s produced now.

Recycling is a great idea, but it will not amount up to the ever growing number of plastic

produced; only 9% of all plastics ever produced is recycled. This article reflects how much

plastic production is getting out of hand, so much so that China banned the import of plastic

waste from other countries to help solve their own plastic problems. Some effects of China’s ban

on the US is the them sending their plastic waste to South and Southeast Asia where they are not

prepared for it and them burning their plastic waste (Arkin). The burning of plastic puts, and

will put, toxins in our atmosphere and will cause thinning of the ozone layer and possibly burn it

up so we won’t have it to protect us from the sun’s UV rays. If people were to burn the plastic

waste and put toxins in our air, who knows what would happen. It might be harder to breathe, the

air might be thicker or sharper, the sky might be clouded with pollutant plastic toxins, and it

would most likely change human biology. Meaning people might have to evolve to get used to

the toxic air. If the ozone layer were to disappear or thin out a lot, the sun’s UV rays and

radiation will cause a higher chance for people to get skin cancer and may not be able to go

outside of their homes unless fully shielded from the sun’s deadly rays.

Equally important, there is 79,000 tons of plastic waste ranging around 1.8 trillion pieces

that take up a space three times as big as France in the Pacific Ocean. The Great Pacific Garbage

Patch is expanding greatly and has seen to be increased 4-16 times larger than previously

supposed because of oceanic currents and careless pollution. The mass of plastic is not

considered an island or single mass, instead, it is a large area with high volumes of plastic which
increases as you move towards the center; the garbage mostly comes from Pacific countries but

can and will also come from anywhere due to the ocean currents. Studies found that fishing nets

and tiny specks of plastic are what make up around 46% of the debris. This study and scientific

reports were led by the Ocean Cleanup Foundation and researchers by the US, New Zealand,

France, Britain, Denmark, and Germany. They have also said that the patch is getting more and

more dense within. In a 2015 study, humans are estimated to be filling the oceans with around 8

million tons of plastic waste per year, and that number is said to go up 22% by the year 2025.

The part of the sea where the patch is is where the ocean currents stop and the garbage just sticks

around and piles up. Studies show that since there is more garbage coming in than going out, the

size of the pile is steadily increasing. Also notice, much of the plastic sinks to the bottom of the

ocean, and the fishing nets are being tossed into the ocean rather than being tossed onto shore.

Much plastic is sinking to the floor of the ocean, or into the rooted depths of the ocean, and

damaging the seafloor and coral reefs (Mooney). There are deadly bacterias that like to attach

themselves to plastic and when the plastic sinks to a coral reef, it it increases the likelihood of

disease-ridden reefs. The bacteria will attach itself to plastics, such as bags, fishnets, diapers,

toothbrushes, and bottlecaps and when that sinks down to the seafloor near, next to, or on coral,

they will jump from the plastic to the coral and destroy all or part of it (Pereira). If you pollute

any plastic of any sort into the ocean, it will most likely go into the not so Great Pacific Garbage

Patch and/or sink down into coral and destroy them. Environmentally, great pacific garbage

patch is a disaster and needs to be resolved. If more garbage is going into it than coming out, the

only thing that will happen is it will increase in size and density. If everybody recycled all of the

plastic they have ever used, there would be no need to continuously make more and more plastic
because all of the recycled plastic would be used over and over and there would be plenty for

everybody worldwide without making more.

In fact, without coral reefs, the fish will lose their homes and die out to predators, without

fish many people who live on islands that rely on fish will die out. With deadly diseases

attaching themselves to plastic sinking to the coral reefs, the entire ocean ecosystem is in ample

danger. The plastic is like a motor home for the bacteria, they colonize the plastic chunks they

invade and when the plastic bits scrape and cut the coral open, it’s a free pathway to get inside

and infect the reef(s). An infection can possibly kill an entire coral, and some of the reefs out

there are very old and ancient and house tons of fish. Some of the ancient ones can be up to

hundreds of years old, and a toxic disease will be awfully destructive and devastating. A survey

of 159 coral reefs across Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Myanmar (regions that hold over

half the world’s coral reefs) surveyed by an international team of scientists found that ⅓ of the

reefs had plastic pieces of two inches or greater. Researchers found that when the plastic sinks to

and reaches the coral, the infection rate goes from 4% to 89%. Researchers also predicted around

11.1 billion plastic bits interweaved on reefs across the Asia-Pacific region and is supposed to

increase by 40% in the next seven years. Some coral can and will be able to recover from these

stressful events of disease intake, but if the damage is too severe, then the coral will die

completely. Simple little things like using less plastic, banning single use plastic, and better

management on wildlife in general would help prevent the reefs from dying out and possibly

going extinct (Pereira). If the coral reefs start dying out left and right, lots of fish will go extinct

and the whole food chain will be messed up. Speaking of which, certain species of turtles will

start to go extinct because of the lack of smaller fish. A lot more now, sea turtles are swallowing
hundreds of little bits of plastic which increase their chance of death significantly. Younger sea

turtles are at the most risk because they tend to drift with the current, just like plastic, and they’re

not as choosy when it comes to food like the adults are. Six of the seven species of sea turtle are

considered threatened while all seven species have eaten plastic debris. Even just one single

piece of plastic can kill a turtle. Because of the anatomy of the turtles, they are not able to throw

up anything they eat, thus they cannot simply just throw up the plastic they may have eaten.

Usually sea turtles can live up to around 80 year old but recently, because of all the plastic

debris, they’ve been living up to 20 or 30 years old, which is very young. If we don’t want to end

up killing half our sea turtles, we’ll have to get plastic pollution under control (Weintraub). Sea

turtles are a major part of the ecosystem and keeping the food chain under control. If the sea

turtles become extinct, some small fish, that might grow to be huge, might actually grow huge

and start destroying the ecosystem and messing up the food chain.

In wrong speaking, fracking has managed to invest tens of billions of dollars creating

new manufacturing sites worldwide to turn fossil fuels into resin pellets; used to manufacture

plastic products. Companies profiting off this flow of plastic are adding on to a growing climate

crisis as well as producing a mountain of plastic garbage. Ineos, a UK-based chemical company,

is the center of this growing plastic company with 75 manufacturing facilities across 22 countries

producing chemical leaks, fires, explosions, and air and climate pollution. The businesses also

rely on polluting communities thousands of miles away, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. Ineos

wants to keep expanding which will require new pipelines across Pennsylvania. There is a

movement to stop this because residents have lost their lands and are being told they must allow

the pipeline to be built near community centers, homes, and schools. Sunoco, another fracking
company similar to Ineos, their safety record was a concern previous to the drilling start. The

company has had a higher rate of oil pipeline spills than all of its competitors since 2010

(Wenonah). These companies’ jobs are to pollute and make products that pollute even more. This

is very bad for the environment and our oceans in the long run. If they don’t find a more efficient

way to make something biodegradable then our environment will be destroyed, polluted, and

disturb the food chain. If all of the fish die out in the ocean and the bees go extinct, humanity as

we know it will end, and our last views of our beautiful earth will look disastrous: shriveled up

plants, so many extinct animals, earth will look post apocalyptic.

Modern problems require modern solutions, the simple solution is to just produce less

plastic. If we produce less plastic, less waste is wasted and our nature will be potentially

restored. China’s ban on plastic waste, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and the aquatic life

should be some points to help get this nature cleanup started. Just remember for the next time

you litter plastic, you are potentially putting species of fish and sea turtle in danger.
 Work Cited

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