Plastic+Soup

Lauren Meyer

Plastic Soup

Those who visit the Jersey Shore are only worry about a few things: the massive amounts of jelly fish, the mysterious piles of sand that appear in your bathing suit, and the fear of contracting excruciating sunburn. But everyone overlooks a deadly containment of the sea... plastic.

The plastic in the ocean consists of bags, shampoo bottles, chemical cleaner bottles, cheap holiday decorations, plastic containers, Styrofoam, fishing net, and water bottles.

People think of the ocean as their personal landfill. According to greenfeet.com “An estimated 14 billion pounds of trash, much of it plastic is dumped in the world's oceans every year.” Every piece of plastic ever made still exists, and most of it covers the surface of the ocean. We have no one to blame but ourselves. But how did we get to this point?

Water bottle companies have convinced the world that bottled water is better than tap water. Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. Only 1-2% of this plastic is recycled. The rest is either dumped into the ocean or is blown into the water by wind.

Plastic doesn’t biodegrade. It just continues to break down into smaller pieces, until they are as small as a grain of sand. These pieces littler ocean shores and are commonly found in fish and birds. In some areas, the ratio of plastic to life in the ocean is 6:1.

“Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1 million sea creatures every year"

There is a shortage of food in the ocean, for animals, because the thick layer of garbage over the ocean surface has blocked sunlight, a main factor in photosynthesis. Without this crucial supply of nutrients, the food chain is diminishing and animals have started to eat the plastic caps of water bottles and plastic bags (because of their resemblance to jellyfish). Adult birds regurgitate the caps to their young, who then quickly die from the chemicals and blockage to their digestive system.Birds skeletons are being found onshore with hundreds of plastic pieces and garbage in that they had eaten.

“267 marine species are affected by plastic garbage—the journal //Environmental Research// by Charles Moore, of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation.”

The chemicals found in plastic are affecting the health and future of humans. Plastic is made of monomers (derived from oil) and polymers, and is considered a carcinogen. According to plasticfreeocean.com “Sunlight, wave and wind action disintegrate plastics into a soup of toxins and carcinogens, and estrogen-like compounds against which no living thing has any defenses. These compounds are having grave effects from the very bottom of the food chain all the way to the very top – effects which may include significantly reduced reproductive activity in key areas of the food chain.”

A new study done by a research team in Japan reveals that plastic breaks down quicker in water, than it does on soil. This is bad because the chemicals from the plastic, such as cadmium, lead and mercury, are released faster into the water and ocean habitats, eventually ending up in our blood streams. We obtain these chemicals from the contaminated water and fish. If ingested, the chemicals cause an unbalance of hormones, infertility, developmental problems, birth defects, and cancer.

To clean the ocean of all of the plastic and garbage we have polluted it with is an impossible task. The world’s consumption levels are increasing too rapidly to compete with the small level of cleanup that exists. The only way to alleviate this mess is to cut down on our consumption level of plastic. Whether it is using canvas bags instead of plastic or refilling re-useable water bottles. It is the only way to minimize the waste going into landfills and the ocean.

