Long-Term Environmental Consequences

According to Ocean Crusaders, there is over 100,000 marine animals that die each year because of plastic bags. “Beaked whale species in particular are highly susceptible to swallowing plastic bags as they are believed to strongly resemble their target prey, squid,” Britannica Advocacy for Animals states. Animals do not know what a plastic bag is, and often mistaken them for food. When an animal ingests a plastic bag, the plastic bag will be stuck in the gut for a very long time, sometimes more than 1000 years! Also, food would not be able to go through the intestines anymore and would probable cause the animal to die slowly. Since a plastic bag takes around 1000 years to completely decompose, it means that by the time the animal decomposes, the plastic bag is still not fully decomposed and will be back in the ocean, ready to kill another animal. As you can tell, plastic bags are very harmful to animals, especially marine animals. When plastic bags are banned, there is no chance of it going into the ocean, and many animals will be saved.

Two out of every five people living in Sub-Saharan Africa lack safe water. A baby there is 500 times more likely to die from water-related illness than one from the United States. This is a serious ongoing issue that requires the rest of the world to take action. Water spreads diseases easily if the necessary precautions are not taken. Many developing African countries don’t have sewage treatment, or the people don’t have methods to filter and disinfect. Once a person is sick either there is no way to cure them, or medical care is too expensive, so they are left untreated with a high risk of death. Although many believe that the fight for sanitary water in Africa is insurmountable, people in these developing countries can overcome their challenge to access clean water and avoid water-borne diseases through proper sewage treatment facilities, universal water filtration and medical care.

In conclusion, it should have been learned that the issue of plastic pollution has become ruinous. The cost of repair and the inconvenience of lifestyle changes cannot compare to the frightful future this planet is headed. At current rates, hazards are not just inflicted on Earth's oceans but individual human health and the other creatures that rightly inhabit this land. With this concern

Plastics of the 20th century should consider the health of the environment. Over the past 153 years http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/11/14/fsummit.climate.plasticbags/ of producing plastics there is an evident impact of the environment. The Earth’s ocean has 5.25 trillion pieces, which is equivalent to 269,000 tons floating on the surface. Some of plastic is as small as 1cm2; this makes this every difficult to reverse the already existing impact of humans. This large scale disaster also affects the wildlife. 100,000 marine animals and 1 million birds have to suffer the consequence of plastic pollution every year. Globally a million single-use plastic bags are used every minute, this number is also increasing. http://oceancrusaders.org/plastic-crusades/plastic-statistics/

A fifth of the world’s population (1.2 billion people) lack access to safe water today.

The commodification of water is driven by fears of water scarcity, accessibility and cleanliness. Water is recognized a basic human “the human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses” (UN, 2002). But despite this it estimated approximately a billion people do not have access to clean drinking water.

An average of 1.8 billion people around the world face the problem of unsanitary drinking water. From adults to children living in developing countries they risk disease and illness by drinking unsafe water. More than 840,000 people die a year related to water disease, and are faced with symptoms such as diarrhea. Diarrhea alone, from poor drinking water and sanitation, kills approximately 2,300 people per day. Related to this statistic one child dies every minute from water-related illnesses. Many people around the world are faced with a water issue such as unsanitary drinking water, and women spend hours each day collecting water just to survive. The people in theses countries have no option since without water humans can’t

Since the 1990’s Americans are drinking less soft drinks and are now consuming more bottled water than ever. Currently, Americans are drinking over 50% more bottled water than they did in 2001 (theatlantic.com). A reason for this could be that more Americans are aware of the health issues soft drinks create. Although the resurgence and emphasis on a healthier society is a positive aspect of the popularity of water bottles, it does also bring negative aspects. For example, 80 million bottles of water are sold daily in the US daily which means that 80 million plastic bottles need to be disposed. Recycling is what many people believe combats the issue of disposing of so many water bottles but only 20% of those plastic bottles actually get recycled leaving the other 80% to end up in the ocean or even a landfill. This harms the environment, as landfills tend to remove the oxygen from the ground and release methane, a greenhouse gas, harming the ozone layer. A depleting ozone layer causes global warming, the ice caps to melt, and an increased risk in skin cancer. As for the oceans, the plastic bottles degrade then conjoin to create plastic masses as large as the state of Texas. This harms the coral reef and not only pollutes the ocean but also people’s food supply as many fish ingest the plastic then people ingests the fish.

In the documentary “Inside the Garbage of the World”, the main social problem being explained is that there has been a great influx of plastic and other type of garbage in oceans and their beaches. This buildup of pollution has largely affected the wildlife population ranging from animals on the beaches to the creatures of the ocean. In oceans, what is called ‘garbage patches’, a large buildup of garbage that flow to one area in the oceans, are being created. Approximately 50 percent of all plastic sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor but about 2 times that much is actually already on the ocean floor. In fact, according to the documentary, there is a garbage patch that is to the left of California that is the size of half of the United States. Each year, about 4.7 million tons of plastic goes in the ocean a year and it is estimated that by 2050, there will be another 33 billion tons of plastic added to the present amount. Eighty percent of the current pollution comes from the land. According to marine researchers, twice as much plastic debris is one the ocean floor than it was 10 years ago. In the futures, plastic will break down into smaller pieces of plastic, creating a bigger problem from the habitat. This plastic pollution is one of the leading cause for beach and ocean inhabiting creatures be extinct because animals are mistaking these plastic pieces for food. When scientist began to dissect beach animals such as birds, they discovered that at least fifteen pounds of

Due to their regurgitation ability; most studies have focused on the ingestion of plastic pollution by bird, this does little harm to birds used in the studies. The effects of ingestible plastic on fish have not been studied as thoroughly and no studies have been conducted on filter-feeding organisms, which do not possess a feeding mechanism which would allow them to distinguish between plastic and plankton. Plastic pollution is only getting worse due to increasing population of developing countries. A wide variety of marine species is known to be harmed by plastic debris. This could threaten the survival of certain species, especially since many are sadly endangered by other types of anthropogenic actions.

Clean water is essential to our basic needs as human beings and has been acknowledged as a basic human right according to the UN as of July 28, 2010. Still, 1 in 9 (782 million) people don’t have access to clean water, 1 in 3 (2.5 billion) don’t have access to adequate sanitation which results in the spread of often fatal and preventable disease. In a world where 2 in 5 people own a smartphone, it’s easy to forget that for some people even the most basic necessities are hard to come by. Approximately 3.5 million people die every year due to inadequate water supplies. Access to sanitation and safe drinking water could save the lives of 1.5 million children each year.

There is rising unease about throwing out plastic products as well as the accumulation of plastic products in our oceans and landfills. This poses problems for all species in the environment, such as animals becoming tangled in smaller products, organisms consuming the products, or transferring chemicals directly to humans in the surrounding environment. Plastic products being dumped into landfills is not sustainable for our present and future environment. A small amount of fossil fuels is being used to create plastic products. The fossil fuels are practically wasted because the products are cheaply made and are thrown out shortly after purchase. Depleting the amount of fossil fuels, rapidly filling up landfills, and manufacturing briefly used plastic products is not sustainable for our environment. Increasing the amount of recycling, cutting down on plastic production, and reducing on the amount of littering are all valuable solutions to cut down the amount of plastic in landfills. (Thompson, Moore, vom Saal,

It is also in bags that we use to carry these items. This use of plastic is helpful for humans, but when it has contact with the water it has a massive threat. To a sea turtle, a floating plastic bag looks like a jellyfish. Plastic pellets look like fish eggs to seabirds. When turtles and seabirds consume the plastics in the ocean, many of them will die because it fills up their stomachs. Making it impossible for them to eat other food, so they starve to death. Or they just choke on it. This starts to decline their population, which affects the food chain. Once the food chain is affected, many species will become endangered or extinct. Drifting six pack rings entangle mammals and fish, making it difficult, to move or eat. As our use of plastic increases, so does the danger to marine life. Plastic remains floating on the surface, the same place where their food sources lie, for 400 years. Plastic is durable and strong, which makes it so dangerous once it reaches the ocean. Also in certain areas, plastic gathers together as it carried by

Plastics harm animals and consequence the death of them. Thousands of wild animals and sea animals are dying because of the plastic pollutant. In addition, once the animals swallow the plastic, it will not pass by the animals’ gut so it stucks, and that leads to a slow and excruciating death. Moreover, as plastics need more than lifetime to decompose, after the animal dies and decays, the plastic will be freed back again to the environment to keep killing other animals (Ark, n.d.). In the marine environment, plastic bags are the most frequently mistaken

Water deprivation of the people living in rural communities is a widely documented occurrence all over the world. It is estimated that over a billion people across the world do not have access to safe, clean drinking water (WHO/UNICEF, 2006), even though as a basic human need it is an essential component of the right to life. Contaminated water endangers both the physical and social health of all people and it is a disregard to human dignity. In this context, decreasing this number by half by 2015 was one of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.