The Perils of Plastic
- Court (Wade) Caywood
- Oct 29, 2019
- 4 min read
by Lily, Grade 8
The Perils of Plastic
Someone once said something along the lines of, if the water is running in the bathtub and is overflowing and you try and fix this problem by using towels on the ground to clean up the mess, then you will never solve the problem. How should you fix it? The sensible way to fix a problem such as this is to turn the water off so that the tub does not keep overflowing. In a way that is much too true, this situation is much like the one that the entire environment is stuck in. The perils and dangers of plastic in the oceans doesn't just affect the world under sea level, it goes well beyond.
The whole world is one big stretch of the same things. Earth all connects in a very non one dimensional way. There are thousands of unseen cycles that occur on Earth that happen every day while our backs are turned as we live our lives. Our planet coordinates with the sun and the moon, and even us. With all of its resources, there always seems to be enough for us. But that is not necessarily true. Humans, for some reason, tell themselves that the resources on Earth are unlimited, but oil supply won’t last forever, which will push the oil and gas prices through the roof, which could contribute in taking the roofs from over our very heads. But cost and loss of resources is the least of our problems. Nearly 12 million tonnes of plastic floods the ocean every single year. Not only does the littered ocean water affect the marine animals, it comes up on shore and does just as much harm to life on the land. As the people who live on our planet that supplies us with so much, we are obligated to clean up the mess we’ve made.
Years ago, plastic was invented. While people were used to using glass, plastic filled the shelves, and the pockets of the people who invented it. Plastic was made to make family life easier. For mothers that stayed home with their children, women were targeted in plasticware adds so that they would buy them as a safer solution with children. Plastic doesn’t break, and that was the moneymaker. Products like Tupper-ware and plastic wrap was marketed as very helpful and much better than glass, which could easily break. And to this day, every family home has a set of plastic containers in it. Everyone agrees that we need to get the plastic out of our oceans.
Howbeit, there are some obstacles that are in the was on the big ocean clean-up. The first, probably most concerning, is money. To make a device that cleans up the trash from the ocean could and will cost millions, even billions, of
The Pacific Garbage Patch/Pacific Trash Vortex: An area off the west coast of the United States that is packed with trash and garbage; it is harmful to the environment and people are trying to find ways to clean this part of the ocean.
expensive dollars. But that is not the only money-related complexity.
Many businesses make their money by producing plastic products, and if plastic is completely cut out of their factories, jobs would be lost, money would be lost, and so would their business (at least until a new product is made to replace plastic). This would, quite obviously, be a huge problem. The second problem might as well be just as hard to solve. Not everyone is willing to do what it takes to solve this issue. All of this started in the early 20th century; plastic was brought into the lives of everyone who was willing to buy it. From there, it just snowballed, and now we have a big thing to deal with, and many people may not want to. Finding a solution to a problem like this will be difficult, and people will have full-time jobs committed to finding that solution. But getting others to understand why it is so important to work hard to solve it may not be easy. Companies won’t want to lose their money because of an environmental issue. But, it is easier said than done to find a way to stop the running faucet in this situation.
It has crossed the minds of many that maybe a product should be made that is similar to plastic, but is biodegradable and safe in the world we live in. This would be one way that we could shut off that running faucet. By doing this, we can, over the years, clean up the plastic in the ocean, and then stop littering the ocean with plastics and other kinds of trash by making and coming up with better solutions, just like the inventors of plastic thought they were doing.
As a middle schooler, you may not think that you can do anything about this issue, because when it is thought about, this is a very large scale problem. But, there are some things that can be done. Remember to recycle plastic if it is a rigid container, such as what you would buy strawberries in. Plastic cups can also be recycled, but do not recycle non-rigid plastic, like plastic bags or plastic wrap.
In doing so, make sure you cut up pieces of plastic that you think may tangle around sea animals and/or cause harm in any way. You could also invest in buying fewer plastic products.
Recently, devices have been made to gather trash from the ocean. Boats take them out and collect the waste from the water’s surface. But there are a few downsides to this, even though the main intention is good. First of all, this is a lot of money. Do build a device that is big enough to do something like this, it has to be of great size. One particular prototype was made by The Ocean Cleanup, and is nearly 2000 feet long, is a boom-like structure that sweeps the top of the ocean surface to clean up the pacific garbage patch. This took millions of dollars to create. Second of all, this won’t fully solve the problem of trash in the oceans. This device would have to be brought through the garbage patch for decades to clear the sum of garbage that is over 2 times the size of Texas and is between California and Hawaii.
This trash vortex is huge, and only a very big prototype could get close to fully solving the problem. But even then, trash will still find its way into the ocean.
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