1.8 trillion pieces of plastic pollutants weighing in at over 80 000 tonnes, all floating in the pacific ocean between Hawaii and California, is what makes up The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (below). It is the world's largest buildup of ocean plastic, and this only being calculated based on buoyant and less dense plastics that stay floating on the surface. This does not include all those pollutants that have drifted further or that have sunk into the ocean. More than half of the plastic that pollutes the ocean is like that of which the Pacific garbage patch consists of, meaning the visible pollution will continue to grow.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the largest of the 5 main collections of garbage floating in the world's oceans, and all of the plastics and pollutants have an extremely negative impact on marine and human lives.
For marine animals, there are various safety and health concerns that come up due to plastics and pollutants floating throughout the oceans. One being that many animals mistake plastics for food, causing health problems like malnutrition and safety issues like becoming tangled in some of these larger pieces of plastic. Some of these plastics contain harmful chemicals and are consumed, leaving another added concern for marine wildlife. Studies have shown that over 700 species have encountered debris and pollutants put in the oceans by humans, and 92% of those pollutants are plastic. This number can only increase with the fact that approximately 2.4 million tonnes of plastics are dumped into the ocean every year.
These plastics, in turn, also affect humans as well through the food chain and economy. The food chain is affected because the harmful chemicals and plastics that are being consumed by animals, are then going into humans when these animals are consumed. The economy is affected because fisheries are losing money which would otherwise be put into the economy when goods are purchased, and also, due to the greater and more often expenses of beach cleanups. The estimated environmental damage was determined to be an estimated 13 billion USD per year according to the UN.
Author: Anonymous
Works Cited
Ocean Cleanup. “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” The Ocean Cleanup, 2018,
Comments