NORTHWEST INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY REVIEWS
PART ONE
PLASTIC MATERIALS AS A SOURCE OF OCEAN POLLUTION
Covering more than 70 percent of our planet, oceans are among the earth’s most valuable natural resources. They govern the weather, clean the air, help feed the world, and provide a living for millions. They also are home to most of the life on earth, from microscopic algae to the blue whale, the largest animal on the planet. Yet we’re bombarding them with pollution. By their very nature—with all streams flowing to rivers, and all rivers leading to the sea—the oceans are the end point for so much of the pollution we produce on land, however far from the coasts we may be. And from dangerous carbon emissions and choking plastic to leaking oil and constant noise, the types of ocean pollution that humans generate are vast. As a result, collectively, our impact on the seas is degrading their health at an alarming rate. Here are some ocean pollution facts that everyone on our blue planet ought to know.
The majority of the garbage that enters the ocean each year is plastic and here to stay. That’s because unlike other trash, the single-use plastic bags, water bottles, drinking straws, and yogurt containers, totalling some eight million metric tons of the plastic waste we toss (instead of recycling), won’t biodegrade. Instead, they can persist in the environment for a millennium, polluting our beaches, entangling marine life, and getting ingested by fish, whales, turtles, and seabirds.
The most infamous example of marine debris is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But these patches (which are more like “soups”) represent only a fraction of the trash in our oceans. In fact, plastic debris has been found at the bottom of the deepest ocean trench.
All the waste mentioned above, that is visible to the naked eye, represent only 1% of global pollution. Once in the ocean, some rubbish sinks and other floats. The floating debris fragment into smaller pieces before sinking as well. The vast majority of pollution is therefore invisible, having disappeared into the depth of the ocean or being too small to notice: the microplastics.
These microplastics, as they break down, release toxic additives into the environment. But because of their porous microstructure, they also absorb other pollutants already present in the environment such as pesticides, hydrocarbons and heavy metals. An explosive cocktail condensed in a fragment less than 5 mm wide – easily ingested and deadly. Each year, 23,000 tons of toxic substances are released into the ocean from plastic waste.
Plastic materials can be mistaken for prey and ingested by animals . We all have in mind the images of a sea turtle chewing on a plastic bag, or a dead shark in a driftnet. The ingested debris cannot be digested and will generate a false sensation of satiety, gastric obstructions and ulcers. More than 800 animal species are impacted by macroplastics, and 100,000 turtles and marine mammals die because of macroplastic pollution every year. In seabirds, it is even worse: it is estimated that more than one million birds die from plastic overdose each year. These numbers, unfortunately, are probably vastly underestimated.
