May 2019 - The English Times May Newspaper | Page 8

GIOVANNA CRUZ
The beverages offered by Colegio Santo
Agostinho’s canteen are sold in plastic
cups, and together with the drinks comes a
dying because of the ingestion of this
material.
In 2009, Bonnie Monteleone, together with
plastic straw. Two plastic materials are Algalita Marine Research Foundation,
wasted from only one drink as cups and conducted a 10-year resampling of the North
straws are made to be disposable. In this Pacific Gyre, quantifying the rate of plastic.
school, there are more than 3000 students As a result, they could estimate the existence
- not including the employees, who of 34,400 metric tons of microplastic in the
represent at least water. The microplastics are smaller particles
¼ of the total school
population – who can buy the products of plastic that are eaten by marine living
offered by the canteen. All of this means a beings, such as fish, crabs and plankton. The
huge waste of plastic. ingestion can lead to their death and
A viable alternative to reducing this waste
generate the process of bioaccumulation (the
of plastic is to change the material of the plastic absorbs free floating chemicals, and
cups. Instead of selling juices in plastic these toxins migrate to animals’ muscles and
cups, the canteen can sell paper cups and fatty tissues when ingested).
abandon the use of straws. Paper cups are
In addition, in a recent study published in
adopted by fast food brands such as Scientific Reports, University of California
Burger King and McDonald’s and can be researchers examined 76 fished slated for
easily implemented inside the school. In human consumption in Indonesia and 64 in
order to do this, it is only necessary to California. They found that in both groups,
change the supplier of the canteen's cups one quarter had plastic particles in their guts.
to another one that sells paper cups, or if In addition, marine scientists from the
this same supplier sells the paper ones, National University of Ireland found that 73%
choose to buy this new option. of deep-water fish, out of a sample of 233,
The logic of plastic usage is wrong: we
produce disposable products out of a
material that doesn’t degrade. Therefore,
we are always introducing a foreign
material to the environment, if we don’t
recycle, thus causing several bad
consequences for the global ecosystem.
According to the website “earthday.org”,
more than half a billion plastic straws are
used every day around the world and 500
billion plastic cups are used every year by
the global population. The problems are
visible in the present moment, and they are
increasing each second. It’s more than time
to make people conscience about this
issue, as almost all marine ecosystems are
contaminated with plastic, and thousands
of animals are
from the Northwest Atlantic Ocean had
microplastics in their stomachs.
IT IS MORE THAN TIME TO BAN
THE USE OF STRAWS AND
PLASTIC CUPS