Plastic Waste in Our Oceans

Plastic Waste in Our Oceans

Everyone knows that plastic waste in our oceans is a problem – but do you really know just how bad that problem is? A widely reported study published in the Journal Science in early 2015 found that in 2010, eight million tons of plastic trash ended up in the ocean from coastal countries – that’s about five plastic bags per foot of coastline. Even worse, if current trends continue, by 2025 it will be ten plastic bags per foot of coastline, with 15.5 million tons of plastic trash entering our oceans annually.

Ocean plastic has already turned up literally everywhere. It has been found in the deep, deep sea and buried in Arctic ice. It has been ingested (with dire consequences) by at least 700 species of marine wildlife. In coral reefs, plastic bags easily wrap around coral heads, quickly “suffocating” and killing them. Fish and birds also quickly get trapped in plastic waste like the rings that hold cans together in a six-pack, and eventually die of starvation. According to the Los Angeles Times, about 200,000 of the 500,000 albatross chicks born each year on Midway Atoll, a wildlife refuge in the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii, die of starvation because their parents mistake plastic trash for food and end up feeding it to their chicks.

The problem isn’t going away anytime soon. According to the Research Triangle Institute, since water keeps the plastic cool and algae blocks ultraviolet rays, "every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere."

Clearly, the world is not going to stop producing plastics – the use of plastic in consumer products has become increasingly dominant, and production has steadily risen since the material was first put into wide use a half century ago. For example, in 2012, 288 million tons of plastic were manufactured globally.

So how do we save our seas? Better litter collection and systems to save plastic from entering the ocean in the first place could help, but would likely only make a dent in the problem. Changing the formulation of the plastics we manufacture to make them easily and quickly biodegradable is a much better solution, and it’s possible to do – in fact, EcoPoly Solutions Inc. has been a leader in biodegradation technology for years. EcoPoly Solutions Inc. already has an additive that makes plastic biodegradable when it’s added during the manufacturing process. This can also be customized for agricultural products to degrade for any designated timeframe.

Technology gave us this problem, and technology is what’s needed to solve it. However you look at it, making plastic products biodegradable should be priority #1 if we want to save our oceans (and our planet!) from choking to death on plastic waste.