What will happen after plastics enter the ocean? And who started? Plastic pollution is killing marine life. A lot of animals are dying now. Humans started the plastic pollution problem but humans can change it.​

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How the plastics are made

​      Let’s start with who made the plastices and the reason why we use the plastices so much. In 1907, a  person named Leo Baekeland made rubber with  Asian beetle resin. And with that, Leo recreated plastic with an Asian beetle resin rubber. Because plastics are convenient, a lot of people made them. Also, there were so many of them it became cheaper. It is important because this is the reason why we use plastic so much.  We use plastics called Polyethylene Terephthalate most of the time in pet bottles, conditioner bottles, carry-home food containers, and more. Secondly, we use plastics called High-Density Polyethylene a lot too by toys, reusable plastics, waste & recycling receptacles ( trash cans), and more.

Journey of plastics

   When we use plastics it always ends in the environment. During the journey of plastics, the plastics float in the river first, then they arrive at the sea. Next, the ocean currents push them to the gyre, like a toilet that doesn’t flush (ever). Also, we can say trash island. In the gyre, the sunlight, wind, and salty water break down the plastics into microplastics. According to Captain Charles Moore, he said: “Gyre works with a toilet bowl effect of dragging the debris from the rim to the center.” This shows that the gyre is very very dirty and has a lot of plastic inside.

See animals VS Plastices

But the problem here is that the ocean animals are living there too. There are 5 big trash islands. But animals like sea turtles, they just eat microplastics and plastics because they don’t know what is good for them and bad for them. According to ecowatch.com, they said “100% of sea turtles have plastics inside their stomachs….” which means that all the turtles that are in the ocean have plastics inside their stomach. This tragic mistake makes their life turn into hell. Also, whales get affected too. More than 240 whales have plastics inside their stomachs, cause of the same reason with the turtles.

Convenient but harmful plastices

We make 126 between 142 plastics every day. And there aren’t a lot of types of plastics that we can recycle. Scientists are still studying decomposing plastics.

Life with plastices

The scary thing is we are breathing the microplastics also we are eating the plastic. In clothes like fury clothes, sometimes it makes us sneeze and that’s because of microplastics floating in the air, and sometimes maybe we eat fish that ate the plastics. Also when you drink the water in a plastic bottle, we are drinking microplastics together. And when the baby chews toys like Lego, blocks, and teething toys, they will eat plastic pieces.​

Solutions?

A lot of scientists tried a lot of solutions, like wax worms. Waxworms are worms that can digest plastics. But the problem is we have too much plastic all around the Earth. Waxworms won't be able to catch up all of the plastices, while we produce them faster. And also there aren’t a lot of wax worms in the world. The only ways that can solve this problem is using less plastices. We can use less plastices by useing the eco-bags when we shop, and also we can use less plastices by using the cups that can be recyicled.

We will have a plastic pollution problem forever if people don’t come together and help together and work out together. However, it doesn’t mean that you have to go to the beach and pick up the trash. You can also help by searching for a solution, joining the group together, and trying out the solution. Like using eco-bags, using glass bottles, and more. We can get better. We can try out more solutions. Let’s take care of Earth's health together. The future is in our hands.​