Plastic waste is damaging the environment

Plastic is a killer when we throw it away and it ends up in the sea. Our carelessness and stupidity are responsible for the destruction of oceanic wildlife on a massive scale.

Plastic stupidity

We humans are unbelievably stupid. We have invented a substance that is so cheap to make that it can be used for all sorts of throwaway products, such as packaging for other products, and yet when we do throw it away it won’t just disappear, like natural dead things do, but hangs around for decades.

The substance in question, as you’ve probably worked out, is plastic.

When it gets into the sea, as vast quantities of it do, it degrades extremely slowly, and this degradation takes the form of breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces. The very tiny pieces are known as “nurdles” (or sometimes “mermaids’ tears”).

Oceanic garbage patches

Countless billions of plastic nurdles float on the world’s oceans, rotating slowly with the currents that form “gyres” thousands of miles across. There are five such gyres, in the North and South Atlantic, the North and South Pacific, and the Indian Ocean.

Plastic and other waste finds its way from all parts of the world to the gyres, and they never leave once they get there.

The worst gyre from the plastic waste point of view is that of the North Pacific, which accumulates waste from western North America and eastern Asia. The accumulation has become so enormous that it has acquired the nickname of the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” or the “Pacific Trash Vortex”.

Larger items of waste regularly wash up in the beaches of Hawaii and other Pacific islands, where they do the tourist industries no good at all.

The North Pacific patch is not alone. There are vast accumulations of plastic waste in the North Atlantic and Indian Ocean gyres, although these are not as great as that of the North Pacific.

Damage to wildlife

Plastic waste does immense damage to marine wildlife.  A marine organism cannot tell the difference between a nurdle and a fish egg or piece of plankton, but it cannot digest the former and is quite likely to be poisoned by it or have its digestive tract blocked and then starve to death.

Items such as floating plastic bags are often ingested by larger marine animals, with the same horrifying results.

Marine life does not deserve to be slaughtered wholesale because of the carelessness and greed of humanity, but that is precisely what is happening.

What can be done?

It is difficult for people to avoid buying plastic, because so many things are made from it, but we can take steps to minimise its harmful effects. One is to ensure that as much plastic as possible gets recycled rather than ending up as landfill or being dumped at sea. Another is to refuse the offer of a plastic bag when we buy things in shops, especially if the bag is not biodegradable.

A little more thought on the part of everyone in the world will not solve the problems we have already set in train, but it might do something to prevent them getting worse.

© John Welford