The Enemy of Our Oceans

We use it every day in multiple forms. Bags, containers, bottles, packaging, pens, toothbrushes. Plastic. Eventually it ends up in landfill or in an animal's home, whether that home is the ocean or a creek or a forest. Although it could end up in many different locations, I'm going to focus on what happens when it ends up in the oceans.

Starting with the facts, plastic in out oceans kill over a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals such as turtles every year. 20% of plastic in the ocean is there because its been dumped off a boat of some sort. The other 80% is there because it started on land and made its way to the ocean one way or another. Most of the plastic in the ocean ends up in the North Pacific Gyre, known to many as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is an area of the ocean of the size of Texas that is literally covered with plastic. Thinking about the animals that die from consumption of plastic, there are so many! Turtles mistake floating plastic bags for jellyfish, and when they eat them, their digestive tracks are blocked and they can't eat, so they die. As for seabirds, they see they plastic from in the air, and they dive for it, and when they realize what they're eating, its too late! The plastic fills their stomachs and will eventually kill them. Some small fish may see tiny pieces of plastic bags and mistake them for plankton, and eat them. The plastic in the ocean kills them too.

But what can we do? We can start by using less plastic in general. My family has a lot of reusable bags that we take shopping with us, but sometimes we bring them in to unload the shopping from them and sometimes forget to put them back in the car, so regrettably have to get bags from the store. If possible, we always try and use paper bags, and either way we try and reuse them at least once before we throw them out. The thing with plastic is that no matter what, it won't biodegrade, the pieces just get smaller. So a reusable water bottle is a good start! If you follow the advice given in the Lunch! post, the trash-free lunches you make are helping out too! So much of what we can do to help save the earth in one area have a snowball effect that can be effective in other areas of eco-friendliness.

So what other things can you do to prevent plastic reaching the ocean or other natural habitats? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

**facts for this post taken from the Project Green Bag website. To learn more about plastic getting to the ocean, watch The Majestic Plastic Bag, a video brought to my attention by my brother, who was shown it by the Monterey Bay Aquarium education department**