Here's your outdoor tip on fighting plastic pollution.
Plastic is here with us to stay and surrounds us in the form of grocery bags, food containers, drink bottles and a variety of plastic products. More plastic was made in the past ten years than in previously in our history.
And unfortunately it’s finding its way into our outdoors and oceans. It may be hard to believe, but billions of pounds of plastic can be found floating in the ocean making up almost 40 percent of the ocean’s surface. About 300 million tons of plastic are made each year and about 300 thousand tons of that production eventually end up in the ocean. Thousands of seabirds, turtles, seals and other marine animals are killed each year after eating plastic or getting snarled in it.
The EPA says that every piece of plastic that has ever been made still exists. Ocean pollution starts on land and with its low density, plastic is carried by wind and rain into the seas. More and more microbeads of plastic that are used in toothpastes and cosmetics are flowing into our ecosystem. The North Pacific alone has a flotilla of plastic the size of Texas with small plastic particles suspended just below the surface. It’s thought that fish in the North Pacific ingest 12-24 tons of plastic each year causing death or transfer of plastic up the food chain to their predators—including humans.
Plastic debris in water absorbs dangerous pollutants like PCBs that are passed up the food chain to other animals. Plastic pollution also directly impacts our economy with dollars spent in beach, lake and river clean ups, tourism losses and damages to fishing and related industries. Some tourist destinations are littered with garage and almost look like landfills.
Some causes and results of our problems are:
1. Half the plastic we produce is used once and then thrown away
2. We throw away enough plastic to circle the earth four times
3. We only recover about five percent of the plastics we produce
4. The average American throws way about 190 pounds of plastic each year
5. Plastic accounts for about ten percent of our total waste
6. Americans throw away 35 billion plastic water bottles each year
7. 500 billion plastic bags are used in the world or more than one million each minute
8. It takes 400-1000 years for plastic to degrade
9. The body absorbs plastic chemicals with 93 percent of Americans age six or older test positive for BPA
Here’s how we can help:
1. Choose to reuse shopping bags and water bottles
2. Carry reusable utensils with you in the outdoors or when eating out
3. Replace sandwich bags and juice cartons with reusable lunch bags/boxes and thermos bottles
4. Bring your mug with you to work, restaurants, or the coffee shop
5. Buy your music and video online through downloads
6. Recycle—you should note most plastic will be labeled with a number to identity their type
7. Avoid plastic bags and polystyrene foam as they have low recycling rates
8. Volunteer for outdoor cleanups
9. Carry with you a container to hold your trash and the trash you find from others when you are in the outdoors.
10. Support environmental information rallies: Be an advocate and tell everyone you know about the importance of reduction of plastic use
References-Additional Reading
22 Facts About Plastic Pollution (And 10 Things We Can Do About It)
Mystery: Scientists find plastic garbage at 88% of ocean sites, but only 1% of the trash is accounted for
Ocean plastics pollution: A global tragedy for our oceans and sea life
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/ocean_plastics/Check out this episode!
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