Oceans and Plastic Pollution Quiz

Plastics at SEA (Sea Education Association): North Pacific Expedition 2012, a 36-day nautical research journey through the the North Pacific subtropical gyre down to the Hawaiian islands, found this to be true. The team was studying plastic pollution in the ocean and found that out of the 66,077 pieces of plastic collected in samples, 95% of it was millimeters in size. For more on their incredible journey, check out the crew’s journal log.

Plastic tends to float and bobbing on the surface can lead them to be mistaken for other marine life. Plastic bags are often mistaken for jellyfish by leatherback turtles and consumed. A 2009 study found that out of 408 leatherback sea turtle autopsy reports, plastic was found in a third of those cases. Marine life can also get tangled in nets, cords, and other plastic debris, which hinders their ability to swim and in some cases, can be a severe choking hazard.

Taking hundreds of years to break up, plastic is not going anywhere soon. While some of it does make it to landfills and recycling centers, a majority of it ends up in the ocean through deliberate dumping of garbage into waterways, inefficient waste infrastructure, and simple littering. Once in the water, the plastic waste is gathered up by one of the five major subtropical gyres into enormous stretches of “plastic soup.”

According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, at least 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into our oceans each year. That’s the equivalent of dumping one garbage truck full of plastic into the ocean every minute. If nothing is done, this will increase to two garbage trucks a minute by 2030 and four per minute by 2050!

There are many alternatives to single use plastic products or even just plastic products. From reusable bags to stainless steel travel mugs, giving up plastic can be as simple as a single choice. For more information on alternatives to plastic, check out Beth Terry’s blog, 100 Steps to a Plastic-Free Life.

A 2015 Plymouth University study compiled reports recorded from around the world and found evidence of 44,000 animals becoming entangled or swallowing plastic debris, accounting for a total of 693 marine species. At least 17% of those affected species are listed as threatened or near threatened.

As of 2015, about 6.3 billion metric tons (Mt) of plastic has been produced in the U.S. and, of that, only 9% has been recycled, found a recent study published on Science Advances. The scary thing is if current production and management trends continue in the U.S., 12 billion Mt of plastic waste will end up in landfills or the ocean by 2050.

More than 8 million metric tons (Mt) of plastic waste ends up in the ocean every year. Most of it breaks up into tiny particles from millimeters to micrometers in size making it extremely difficult to clean up. However, that hasn’t stopped people from trying. On February 23, 2017, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) launched its Clean Seas Campaign, an unprecedented global effort to urge “countries and businesses to take ambitious measures to eliminate microplastics from personal-care products, ban or tax single-use plastic bags, and dramatically reduce other disposable plastic items by 2022.”

On average, Americans use 1.6 plastic drinking straws every day, totaling to 500 million per day. That’s enough to fill up 125 school buses a day, or 46,400 school buses a year! Drinking straws may not seem like a lot of plastic but they add up quickly. Instead of getting plastic straws at restaurants or cafes, you can bring your own reusable straw or simply go straw free.

About 5% of total used petroleum in the U.S. goes toward plastic production. This may not seem like a lot but for the world’s largest consumer of petroleum, that’s equivalent to 330 million barrels of oil a year!

According to the Worldwatch Institute, Americans throw away an estimated 100 billion plastic grocery bags each year. Plastic bags can take up to a 1,000 years to break up but, in the meantime, they are crowding landfills, clogging drains, and making their way to the ocean where marine animals are being entangled in them or mistaking them for food.

A report done by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation found that there are over 150 million tons of plastic in the oceans today. That is about 1 ton of plastic for every 3 tons of fish. Keeping up a business-as-usual trend will have plastic outweighing fish in the ocean by 2050.

A report done by the Ocean Conservancy found that over half of the land-based plastic pollution in oceans originates from just five countries – Thailand, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. These countries have all achieved significant growth in recent years, and although this is a good thing in terms of the improvement of quality of life, it also means that consumer demand of disposable plastics is outstripping the ability of the local waste management infrastructure to keep up with it.

The U.S. has not created nor implemented any federal regulations on plastic bags. However, several states such as Hawaii and California have banned single-use non-biodegradable plastic bags and other states have pursued legislation requiring retail stores to have recycling and reuse programs. Other cities and counties have imposed a plastic bag fee such as the District of Columbia, New York City., and Portland, Maine.

A recent study published on Nature found that the ocean is the largest sink for human emitted carbon dioxide and has absorbed about 40% of CO2 emissions since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. While this has slowed the atmospheric uptake of CO2 and the resultant global warming, it is not an end-all solution. Absorption of carbon dioxide has led to an increase in ocean acidification which has a range of harmful consequences for marine life such as coral bleaching and the dissolving of calcifying organism (i.e., shellfish, crustaceans) shells.

According to the 5 Gyres Institute, 12 minutes is the average “working life” of a plastic bag before it is thrown away. Globally, one million plastic bags are used per minute and only 1% of them are recycled. Most of them make their way to the ocean where they can take up to 20 years to decompose.

Only 2.5% of the Earth’s water is freshwater, but over half of that freshwater is locked away in glaciers and ice caps. The water that supports most life on Earth makes up only 1.2% of Earth’s freshwater or about 0.03% of the Earth’s total water!

About two-thirds of the world’s breathable oxygen comes from the ocean or, more specifically, from tiny marine plants, called phytoplankton, floating on the ocean’s surface. Like all plants, phytoplankton photosynthesize, converting carbon dioxide to valuable energy and oxygen. As the world’s leading producer of breathable oxygen, phytoplankton are one of, if not the most, important organisms on Earth. However, they are being threatened by rising sea temperatures. Scientists have estimated that an increase 6 degree C increase in ocean temperatures could disrupt phytoplankton photosynthesis, thereby leading to a global shortage of oxygen.

According to the Pacific Institute, producing a water bottle (including the plastic container and the filtered water inside) requires three times the amount of water in the actual bottle. In other words, every liter of bottled water sold represents 3 liters of water used. And this doesn’t say anything about the energy required to transport it.