Marin Plastics Ban 1 | Page 5

geochemist at Stanford University, the decomposing organisms that we see today “have evolved over billions of years to attack certain types of [chemical] bonds that are common in nature.” (Wolchover, 2011) Moreover, the bonds present in those polymers strings described above most commonly have numerous carbon-to-carbon bonds–which are rare in the natural world. Therefore, the organisms that break down organic material simply haven’t had the time to build the ability to decompose these rare bonds that can be found in plastics. The only thing that can wither plastics is sunlight. The intense UV rays can disrupt those carbon-to-carbon bonds. But even at that, the plastics are only broken into smaller and smaller pieces, not fully decaying. As understood, the average plastic takes 1,000 years just to break into smaller pieces and much longer to actually decompose. The result is truly disastrous.

explained, we now know the health dangers that come with the use of plastics for humans, but when applied to marine animals, those dangers grow exponentially. This is in some part because while we color and contour plastics for ‘aesthetic purposes’, marine life is deceived into thinking it is edible. A study published by The Royal Society found that “more than 180 species of animals have been documented to ingest plastic debris, including birds, fish, turtles and marine mammals” (Knoblauch, 2017). The symptoms of plastic consumption are (but not limited to): malnutrition, intestinal blockage, petroleum chemical poisoning, and starvation. (Reddy, S. - PEW, 2018) And this is only species that have consumed the plastic. The indirect impacts of this devastation are ineffable. As mentioned in the Forbes article “Five Ways that Plastics Harm the Environment”, this perennial plastic dump “threatens 700 marine species with its presence.” Even though these statistics are truly frightening, they don’t cover the greatest threat of all. When plastics ‘degrade’ to a certain size, they are considered to be microplastics. These microplastics are so incredibly small (generally 5 millimeters to 10 nanometres), that they are killing zooplankton. This may be the largest catastrophe to the entire marine ecosystem because zooplankton is its entire foundation. Almost all the energy, nutrients, vitamins, etc. in the entirety of the marine food web come from zooplankton. Remember that energy pyramid thing in science class? How do you think that ecosystem would do with that whole

Let’s start with oceans. Every year, we dump around 8 million metric tons of plastic in the ocean, (Whiting, 2018) and 8.3 billion metric tons as of 2015 (Telegraph.co.uk, 2017); it is expected that by 2050, that number will grow to 12 billion. To put that into perspective, every month, we are putting the equivalent of not one, but two Empire State Buildings of plastic in the ocean. And by that 2050 deadline, it is estimated that plastics will simply outnumber fish by weight. (Kaplan, S. - Washington Post, 2016) As previously