Ocean Dumping Is Affecting The World

In today's society, one of the main problems we face is pollution. The role of plastic playing in the daily lives of people is interminable. The main problem with plastic is that it is tossed into the ocean and that it can travel long distances with the currents and winds. Marine animals and other animals that depend on the ocean for sustenance wind up eating the trash thinking that it’s food. This is especially true for plastic trash (Parker, 2015). For those of us who live on the coast, a mere walk on the beach gives us insight to how much our misuse of plastic has become. The number of seabirds that have ingested the plastic waste and have died is increasing, however, efforts to clean the plastic has stopped due to the cost of the clean-up.

Over the few years, humans have discarded millions of tons of garbage into the oceans. Ever wonder where the cup you threw out this morning will end up? Or the plastic spoon you used for lunch? How about the cap of a water bottle? The calamitous plastic ends up in the water, taking thousands of years to decompose. The consumption of plastic by the marine life is perilous and the leading cause of death for life on shore.

People are polluting the ocean in many ways, and we need to make the ocean healthier. In 2010, 192 countries bordering the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian Ocean, and Mediterranean and Black seas produced 2.5 billion metric tons of solid waste, and within that, 275 million metric tons is plastic waste. Two billion people within 30 miles of the coast create 100 million metric tons of coastal plastic waste. An estimated eight million tons of plastic entered the ocean that same year. Also, every year, eight million metric tons of plastic goes into the ocean. Because of all this trash, ocean and sea animals are losing their healthy habitat. They could get trapped in six-pack rings, mistake solid waste for food and eat it and die, or could get harmed or

“Around 260 million tons of plastic is produced every year, approximately 10% of this ends up in oceans. This litter is frequently consumed, often with fatal effects, by marine animals and birds who mistake it for food. The Trash Vortex of the Northern Pacific ocean is a patch the size of Texas consisting of trillions of pieces of decomposing plastic.” (Geer) Water pollution often directly correlates with other natural recourses that is being harmed by the same

The oceans have too much trash in parts of the world. Billions of pounds of plastic can be found swirling in the gyres of the oceans making up about 40 percent of the world’s ocean surfaces and 80 percent of pollution enters the ocean from the land. Plastic doesn’t degrade well at all. Virtually every piece of plastic that was ever made still exists in some shape or form (with the exception of the small amount that has been incinerated). Also it takes 500-1,000 years for plastic to

Recycling is a great attempt to preserve our natural resources, but it does not even come close to saving the living creatures of Mother Earth herself. The build up of plastic bags and other unnecessary items in our oceans is a greater cause of ecosystem disruption. An estimated 100,000 marine animals die each year due to suffocating on or ingesting plastic bags. Increased levels of man-made pollutants show up in areas like the Arctic, affecting Polar bears, other arctic mammals, melting polar ice caps and adding to the stress of all climate change and global warming. All plastic bags ever thrown away are stored in landfills, which only some of actually properly dispose

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

We 're treating the oceans like a trash bin: around 80 percent of marine litter originates on land, and most of that is plastic. Plastic that pollutes our oceans and waterways has severe impacts on our environment and our economy. Seabirds, whales, sea turtles and other marine life are eating marine plastic pollution and dying from choking, intestinal blockage and starvation. Scientists are investigating the long-term impacts of toxic pollutants absorbed, transported, and consumed by fish and other marine life, including the potential effects on human health.

By the year 2050 plastic bottles will outnumber fish in the ocean. Last year a study by the National Academy of Sciences showed that there are over five trillion pieces of plastic currently littering the ocean. Many people believe that throwing away plastic would have negligible impact on humans and animals, this is untrue. Thousands of birds, turtle, seals, fish, and other marine animals die every after entangling themselves in or consuming the tons of plastic currently in the ocean. Plastic is such a durable material that according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, every single bit of plastic ever made still exists. The ocean has turned into our own personal landfill, affecting millions of lives. Organizations such as

Although the ocean covers approximately two thirds of the Earth’s surface, it is surprisingly susceptible to human influences. The effects of rubbish dumping have tainted our oceans and they have taken their toll on the vast marine environments and the populations in which they contain. Rubbish dumping involves depositing all the waste materials from factories and industries, tankers and ships and sewerage waste materials into the oceans and seas. In the report “Causes and Effects of Ocean Dumping”, the author Sharda states that “The wastes that are dumped into the oceans tend to have toxic substances which soak in all the oceanic oxygen. This

Bottles, ropes, and nets ensnare animals and occasionally kill them. Scientists once found a turtle with a plastic band warping its shell into an hour glass shape (Casey 74). Plastic takes decades to disintegrate where it remains at the bottom of the ocean releasing poisonous chemical into the sea (Hollar 36). The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a stretch of plastic and garbage that floats in the ocean, reaches from California to Japan (Ross). For every one ton of living creatures in our oceans, there is six tons of garbage and plastic (Earle 103). Further, Sewage and excess waste collect in the ocean and pose threats to the ecosystem. U.S. Navy ships discard their wastes into the sea (101). Sewers, manure heaps, and cattle yards dump industrial and domestic waste into the oceans for bacteria to use as their food. They multiply as take up all of the oxygen, leaving nothing for the surrounding organisms (Leggett 26). Sewage, similar to oil, covers plants until they die from a lack of nutrients (27). Sewage exposes animals to disease and presents harm to humans who eat those animals (Hollar 39). Moreover, oil, plastic, garbage, and sewage present many challenges to our oceans every day.

Our waste such as plastic and contaminated water makes its way to the ocean. There, it has a devastating effect on marine life. “5.25 trillion plastic particles weighing some 269,000 tons are floating on the surface of the sea” (Seltenrich). In Seltenrich’s article, “The World Bank estimates that 1.4 billion tons of trash are generated globally each year, 10% of it plastic.” “Plastics that reach the ocean will gradually break down into ever-smaller pieces due to sunlight exposure, oxidation, and the physical action of waves, currents, and grazing by fish and birds.” (Seltenrich). A marine life that is mostly affected is the sea turtles. The sea turtles either consume the plastic or become trap in it, or even both. According to Lowenberg, ingestion of plastic can “result in poor health, reduced growth rates and reproductive output, or death”. Their nesting sites and the baby sea turtles are also at risk. The baby sea turtles can become trap to the plastic as they make their way from the polluted shore into the ocean.

Plastics can also hurt sea life by injuring them. When you are out of the boat and the plastic ring that held your Cokes fly away, it seems like no big deal. Those rings can get wrapped around the necks and heads of turtles, dolphins, and even seals. It can slowly suffocate them, or injure them severely. Plastic grocery bags also have a tendency to kill sea life. Plastic bags never biodegrade, but they do breakdown. As they do so, any toxic additives they contain—including flame retardants, antimicrobials and plasticizers—will be released into the environment (ecowatch.com). Drifting nets that someone cut off their boat entangles birds, fishes and mammals. Eventually, killing them from starvation or exhaustion. The more plastic we use, the more animals we put at risk. All the plastic ocean in the earth is caused by us. We have to pick up our trash and help make the lives of sea life normal again. They

The amount of money needed to clean up the pollution of plastic in the ocean would amount to at least 30 billions US dollars per year. The majority of the plastic polluting the ocean is due to plastic bags which people throw away. The pollution of the environment would endanger animals since they may eat it. Then, others would not make the teeniest effort to recycle because they would think that they are too insignificant to make a change. However, they would be able to make a change, if they desired to do so, since they can just use a little tiny effort as to place the plastic bags inside the recycling bins compared to the regular trash bins. However, there isn't such a perfect world, so people would litter and cause pollution which would deceive animals that mistakenly eat the waste. Animals like turtles and dolphins would mistake plastic bags for jellyfish and would choke on it. This

The amount of plastic produced worldwide is estimated to be around 300 million tonnes each year and between 1.5 and 4.5 per cent of that ends up in the ocean. Were it all to wash up on shore, it would cover every foot of coastline in the world. As a result, the ratio of plastic to plankton in the Mediterranean is thought to be about 1:2, one in three species of marine mammals have been found entangled in litter, fish in the North Pacific ingest about 12 to 24 thousand tonnes of plastic every year, and tiny fragments of plastic have even been found in the arctic ice shelf. Each one of these facts is shocking in its own right, and a tarnish on the human race.