Plastic found to be accumulating in world oceans at alarming rate
Plastic found to be accumulating in world oceans at alarming rate
By Andrew Fazekas, Geekquinox (Reported by Yahoo News), February 12, 2015
Our oceans and beaches are drowning in plastic says a new sobering study , which estimates a whopping 8 million metric tons of the stuff wound up in our oceans, in 2010 alone.
This is equal to five retail size bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline across the globe, said co-author Jenna Jambeck , an Environmental Engineering Professor at the University of Georgia, in an interview with Yahoo Canada News .
Jambeck and her team discovered close to 275 million tons of plastic waste generated by 192 coastal countries in 2010, of which somewhere between 4.8 and 12.7 million tons made its way into the oceans. They estimate about 9.1 million metric tons will also end up in the oceans in 2015, with the top offenders being China and the United States.
The new findings published today in the journal Science points out that if the current pollution trends continue, things will get a lot worse in the not-so-distant future.
If we move forward with business as usual, the annual input will double to 17.5 million metric tons in 2025, she said.
So the cumulative input by 2025 would equal 155 million metric tons.
Researchers are saying that this should be a wake-up call about the pollution of our oceans : We are finding plastic in every corner of the globe, says Jambeck, floating on the ocean, on the ocean floor, in sediments, and in sea ice. Its not surprising, then, that this much plastic has measurable effects on sea life such as whales, turtles and birds, either from ingestion or entanglement. But there are hidden dangers, too.
When large plastic items enter the ocean they fragment into smaller and smaller particles called microplastic, only to become available to the bottom of our food chain. And we dont understand the impacts of that yet. Jambeck said.
Click this link to watch the video and read the rest of this article:
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/geekquinox/plastic-found-to-be-accumulating-in-world-oceans-202200241.html
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About five years ago China passed laws banning major supermarkets, chain stores, department stores and big box stores from providing free plastic bags. The stores now charge for the bags and sell cloth bags for permanent use. I use a backpack and folded up permanent bags when I go shopping, and as well I re-use water bottles.