When you think about your trash you throw away and where it ends up, you likely have little idea as to where it’ll go. You may say that it would end up in a dump somewhere on land, but more often than not, it’ll actually end up somewhere in the water. There are four main garbage piles in the ocean that currently exist, with the largest of them being the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. You’d never believe it but the space that this patch takes up is a whopping twice the size of Texas. Yeah, double the size of the second biggest state in the country.
The heap is made up of various different plastics that you would be quite familiar with. Some include water bottles, food wrapping paper, and plastic shopping bags. All things you would regularly throw away without realizing it would inevitably end up in the ocean. In this patch, it’s estimated that over a trillion plastic items exist, with around 94% of them being microplastics. These microplastics pose two separate risks, one being more harmful to you specifically. The first issue is that these plastics don’t erode for around a thousand years, leaving the plastic in the ocean for many lifetimes. But the other problem is that fish eat these plastics. If you don’t see why that’s such a bad problem, you should think of the food chain. Something will eat that fish, and those microplastics will get transferred to the new lifeform. Eventually, whether it’s from that fish or something that eats it, fishermen will pull them up. Once at market, humans buy them and cook them, leading to those same microplastics ending up in human stomachs. Researchers have found that microplastics are such a bad problem, that even infants are born with microplastics already in their bodies, getting them from their mothers.
When I first learned about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch I was horrified. I saw adults as these figures of good that are able to do anything, but this was a really defining moment. It proved to me that adults aren’t all good people, and that pollution was an extremely dangerous problem. I became more conscious of what I was doing when I threw trash away and what I should do about not throwing away as many things, which has resulted in most of my toys and things I owned as a kid still being in my closet. In a way, the pollution problem led to my incessant need to not waste things. Most times relating to eating all my food and not wasting any, even if it hurts, but also contributing to my urge to keep everything I’m given as gifts. Because in a way it feels morally wrong to throw away a gift or something I’ve been given.
The reason that the GPGP is such a horrible thing, isn’t because of what it is. It’s because of what kind of ecosystem it creates for the animals that live there. It has been seen time and time again that the littering of fishing nets catch turtles and kill them over time, trapping them in the nets and giving them no possibility of escape. I use this example specifically because around 52% of the total mass of the GPGP is made up exclusively of discarded fishing nets. These plastics have been found to impact at least 267 different species of marine animals around the world, including 86% of all turtle species and 44% of seabird species. This count is only including those that have been found by humans, and in actuality the number of species affected is likely far greater.
A few countries have attempted to fix the ocean pollution problems, including ones you’d be very familiar with. The US creating a ban on dumping medical waste was one of the first instances of global action, creating fees and criminal charges for breaking this ban. The UK introduced similar policies called the London Protocol and the London Convention, which did similar things to the US’s ocean dumping ban. Expanding on it and creating further guidelines and introducing more control to the pollution problem.
Although these policies helped with the short term issue of pollution, much more effort is truly needed. In the years since 1988 our technology has increased exponentially, creating larger amounts of waste. I personally think that more should be done about our pollution crisis taking place in the ocean. Which can be achieved by helping to raise awareness about what’s actually happening in our waters. So I task you, the reader, to go out and tell others about what’s really happening in our oceans, and stay informed on how to do your part.
