Living with plastic

The thought of living with plastic may be a new thought for many people, but it may not stay a thought in the coming future, we already see the effects the plastic has on our environment especially on our marine ecosystem. More and more animals ends up with plastic in their system, and that no longer just affects them, it effects us now, our very livelihood may change because of this plastic epidemic. But thanks god many smart brains have come with possibilities to solve this problem. Ever thought of a house made of plastic waste?

The double edge sword

In today's society we live and breathe in plastic, it has become an essential necessity to our everyday lives. From the casings that keep our devices working, to the plastic fibers that keeps our clothes stylish and affordable. It is thoroughly integrated, and it doesn't help that the world keeps growing and the demand for these plastic necessities increases. We can see the negative impact plastic has by looking at the once pristine arctic an uninhabitable place untainted by humans, is now filled with plastic waste from various countries that gets washed up by the atlantic currents and ends there. it is said that most plastic that gets thrown away ends up in the oceans in some way or another, it was calculated that 275 million tons of plastic waste generated by 192 coastal countries in 2010 with 12.7 million tons managed to enter the oceans. many people don’t understand how much plastic is really around us. Not many people knows that plastic like rocks can get fragmented, Sand for example is just very small rocks that once was a mountain. So things like plastic can get fragmented to an unimaginable degree, from a plastic cup to a micrometer, so small that fish can mistake it for food, and unlike other food which comes in and comes out, microplastic actually latches into your stomach, and that can make fishes really sick. Since humans are also included in the food chain, it affects us to. Seafood lovers gets affected the most, they eat up to 11000 plastic particles that ends up in their system, we absorb 1% of the particles, that is not a lot but over times it may have an negative effect. it is worrisome that a study in plymouth university reported that a third of the UK-caught fish contained plastic, it isn't only UK that has this problem, countries like Canada, Brazil and even China is facing this crisis. As a Seafood connoisseur this bothers me so much that 12.7 million tons of plastic is in my foods home and that was in 2010, in 2016 there was produced 335 million tons, that's an increase of 70 million tons. it’s not only showing in the arctics, we now see so called trash islands. A sailor named Charles Moore found this trash vortex it was a place between Hawaii and California, it is now dubbed the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” which is one of the 5 most important subtropic currents. The current picks all the trash and makes this trash island, it is sad that it’s as big as Texas or twice as large as France. It is very hard to measure it, but the center of the island is 1 cubic kilometer and i can reach 3.5 cubic kilometer.