KNowledgeQs
4. How does plastic affect aquatic wildlife?
700 species have been reported to have been entangled by or have ingested plastic in 2015, causing; suffocation,starvation, and drowning. Fish in the pacific area ingest 12,000 to 24,000 tons of plastic each year, causing intestinal injuries and death. This transfers plastic up the food chain to bigger fish that we eat. This is a problem due to plastic being toxic. Once plastic mixes with H2O it acts as a sponge and absorbs toxins poisoning marine life. There are microplastics in every depth of the ocean, and it's estimated that in 2050 all marine animals will encounter our plastic. With that, Richard Thompson discovered that it wasn't just waves and sunlight breaking down plastic, but tiny shrimp like crustaceans called Orchestia gammarellus shredding a single bag into 1.75 million microscopic fragments. Plastic bags are coated with microbial slime witch is their normal food when in their habitat . Thompson states that the chemicals added to plastics to give desirable properties such as malleability, and nanoplastics, that microplastics degrade into might pass into the tissues of fish and humans.
5. If recycling enough? Why has my recycling changed?
Americans take up 4 percent of the world's population yet we produce 25% of the world's trash. With this multitude of people, recycling will not be enough. How it currently stands, the U.S does not actually recycle but rather, sorts its trash and sells it off for others to recycle. Our main go-to for selling our recycling/trash to was China. Up until this point China had been taking up to 50% of the world's trash until they banned foreign recycling imports. Then National Sword in 2018 was was established, which is very picky with what they will accept. It is estimated that in 2020 they won't be accepting any recyclables. Their population has been growing rapidly through the years and they have enough trash of their own that they don't need ours anymore. Even then, when we ship recyclables out to someplace and make money from that, recycling can only go so far. The typical way we recycle is by cleaning, melting, and cutting the plastic to be reused, but plastic can only be recycled in this method for up to 3 times until it loses its value. We need to take direct action and reduce our plastic intake by talking to companies who make their products that we buy from plastic, and about the next step in replacing plastic with a more reliable product.
7. Who are some of the artist who are making an environmental and social difference with their art? How?
Artists who have made a major impact on recycling and the trash industry includes one of the most popular artists in the world, Vik Muniz. He is a New York based artist. During his work he decides to take off the the world's largest landfill in the world, Brazil's Jarim Gramacho. His stay in Brazil created 5 pieces of artwork that sold for around 15,000 Us dollars. The awareness that spread through this month-long process of having the recyclers, also called pickers, help him create the artwork from photographs he had taken previously. The pickers were in poverty but this chance to help with Vik's art made them able go into their lives with new jobs of their choosing revolving around spreading more awareness for those in poverty. Vik did acknowledge what the consequences of having these people work with him for a while would do. They were doing a job that no one else would do and were looked down on because of that. In other words they were seen as survivors as this was dangerous and labor intensive work. Vik's artwork captured the eye and captured a big problem in this country. The aftermath of the artwork and awareness being spread through it made Brazil release the workers from the landfill job. In this they were paid off but had no jobs. In a sense this was a good and bad thing for the workers. This shows that his pieces " Pictures of Garbage " can be beautiful even if made with trash and based off of people that have little social status in their country.
1. How have your studies on this issue, affected you?
Before this issue we had no idea how much plastic was/is being wasted on packaging for our needs everyday. Since we have grown up with this product of plastic it seems like the norm at this point. Until recently, studying this topic with our class has brought a new perspective on this dire issue. Going into the store and seeing all these plastic products, packaging, etc.. has opened our eyes to the issue revolving us and companies. Everything, and we are talking about everything, is put inside plastic. This has shown our addiction and overuse of this product. We have realized that nobody has been talking about this global problem, but we have been talking with our families of ways to cut back on, or change our eating habits and our lifestyle in general revolving in plastic. We know that the US uses 1 million plastic bags every minute. For us, we have started thinking more about how we package our groceries, paper bags rather than plastic ones, and which companies we will support that create products for us as consumers. This is put on us, how and what to buy from day-to-day can have serious change if we work together.
2. What are some of the solutions that are currently being worked on?
Some solutions that are being worked on right now are Chemical Recycling. Scientists have found a new way to chemically recycle plastics. Scientist take plastics and break them down into their fundamental unit, then they send the plastic units back to the company's. After the company's receive the plastic, they can turn it into something that we can re-use therefore creating less waste. Boyan Slat, a 17 year old has funded a project to clean up most of the worlds plastic that is in the ocean. Boyon is planning to start with the N.P.G.P.(North Pacific Garbage Patch) the reason for this is because there are still big objects in it and would like to capture them before they turn into microplastics(extremely small pieces of plastic debris in the environment resulting from the disposal and breakdown of consumer products and industrial waste) . The N.P.G.P. is the largest gyre out of the other five. Plastic is reaching crisis levels and all levels of the food chain are eating plastics.
3. What are some of the things I can do in my daily life to help?
To get yourself started towards helping the environment the first thing you should do is get informed. One of the most important things to know and live by are the four R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Refuse. By reducing you are trying to reduce and limit the amount of plastic you output. Reusing means that you give a plastic object another life by using it again and again, limiting the plastic waste. Recycling is the most well known, and we all try or should try to do it, but as of right now it is getting harder and harder to actually get your objects to be recycled. Now our recycling is sitting in large bails at dumps waiting to be sold or sorted, and most often times it rots before it can be recycled, making it unrecyclable. We can help this situation by establishing a recycling infrastructure in the US so that we can recycle and manage our own materials. That people just like us can do this if we collectively tell legislators and lawmakers our demands.The fourth R, refuse, is one of the most proactive ways to help. By not buying or using plastic materials you are reducing the plastic packaging that you output every year. An average American wastes 800 lbs packaging per person per year. That is a lot. By refusing to buy plastic items, and by refusing single use plastics you reduce the amount of plastic that is slowly choking up our planet. That's not all you can do though; by talking to companies and your local legislators via email or letter about enforcing plastic bans and reducing plastic we can help save our environment. ⅓ of the space taken up in an average landfill is plastic packaging. If we can work towards plastic bans we can reduce this. We should also work towards single use plastic bans. Single use plastics are the items we use for and average of twelve minutes, and they make up 40% of all plastic. These plastics are amongst the most popular and add a suffocating weight to our world and will last up to 1,000 years before decomposing. Such a life-long product being used for a couple minutes to then be tossed and never used again doesn't make sense. For example, in the US we use 60,000 plastic bags every five seconds, and that adds up to 1 million plastic bags every minute. We consume 2 million plastic bottles every 5 minutes. The US also uses 300 million single use coffee cups everyday. By using more sustainable materials such as paper or cloth bags when you shop, your own washable cup when you want to drink out, or by refusing that plastic straw because you have your own paper or metal one, you can reduce the amount of plastic piling up.
6. Why should I care about microplastics?
To start with we should define what microplastics are. Microplastics are broken down pieces of plastic that measure smaller than ⅕ of an inch across. These are the pieces of plastic that we have created and wasted that end up in our ocean. Microplastics are practically impossible to clean up, and most often times you cannot see them with the naked eye. They exist on all levels of the ocean, not just the surface like the larger pieces of plastic debris. These plastics are killing marine animals in over 700 species and all over their food webs. These microplastics have the potential for large scale accumulation in our oceans, and when these animals encounter them there tends to be dangerous consequences. When animals eat these plastics they are absorbing the toxins from chemicals in plastic that react with water. The ocean water enhances the toxins and when an animal eats them it becomes more concentrated. Most often times a small creature such as a amphipods eats the microplastics first, and then they are eaten by a fish, and the fish by something larger all the while accumulating a more concentrated form of toxins in their tissues. A scientist, Richard Thomson, conducted a study where he collected 504 fish of ten different species and discovered that more than ⅓ of them had microplastics in their guts. This is a problem not only because the toxins in the plastics get absorbed into the seafood we eat, but because they are actually killing marine life that create what we eat. Microplastics make the animal that eats them feel full because the plastic stays in its shape and cannot be broken down by the animal's stomach acid. The plastic then stays in the animals stomach, providing no nutritional value. The animal then starves, becomes malnourished, and dies. You should care about microplastics because they are creating a problem that will soon be unsolvable. If they keep building up on our beaches and in our oceans we will soon be faced with the fact that there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050. We will be eating plastics in the seafood we need for essential vitamins and we will lose the biodiversity of our marine life. We need to make a change now before we kill our planet. You should care because this isn't only affecting marine species, it is affecting you too.
8. How can I avoid or replace plastics in my life?
You can replace all of your single use plastics in simple ways. By just using more sustainable materials that are not made of plastic you provide a significant change to plastic waste. You can use paper or metal straws instead of plastic straws. You can use paper or cloth bags when you shop instead of plastic bags. You can use cups, mugs, and thermoses that are made of porcelain, metal, etc, instead of plastic. You can avoid plastic packaging by going to fresh food market spaces or community markets. You can also write to companies and encourage them to stop using plastic packaging. Plastic only came into the world during World War II because it was a cheap alternative for biodegradable objects such as metal or wood, and most things now are put in plastic containers or bottles and sold, but it is possible to replace plastic by using the 4 R's; reduce, reuse, recycle, and refuse.
