How Many Animals Die From Plastic Pollution Each Year

How Many Animals Die From Plastic Pollution Each Year

OCEAN PLASTICS POLLUTION

A Global Tragedy for Our Oceans and Bounding main Life

Plastic accumulating in our oceans and on our beaches has become a global crisis. Billions of pounds of plastic can be institute in swirling convergences that make up virtually 40 percent of the world's ocean surfaces. At electric current rates plastic is expected to outweigh all the fish in the body of water by 2050.

Plastics pollution has a direct and deadly effect on wildlife. Thousands of seabirds and sea turtles, seals and other marine mammals are killed each year after ingesting plastic or getting entangled in it. Endangered wildlife like Hawaiian monk seals and Pacific loggerhead sea turtles are amidst nearly 700 species that eat and become caught in plastic litter.

Information technology's fourth dimension to go at the root of this body of water crisis. The Middle has petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to begin regulating plastics equally a pollutant and is working to stop plastic pollution at the source, earlier it always has a chance to reach the bounding main.

THE PLASTIC Problem

Nosotros're surrounded by plastic. It's in the single-apply packaging we discard, the consumer goods that fill our stores, and in our habiliment, which sheds microplastic fibers in the wash.

In the beginning decade of this century, we made more than plastic than all the plastic in history upward to the year 2000. And every yr, billions of pounds of more plastic end upwardly in the world'south oceans. Studies estimate there are at present 15–51 trillionpieces of plastic in the world's oceans — from the equator to the poles, from Arctic ice sheets to the sea flooring. Not one square mile of surface bounding main anywhere on earth is gratis of plastic pollution.

The problem is growing into a crunch. The fossil fuel manufacture plans to increment plastic production by 40 percent over the adjacent decade. These oil giants are chop-chop building petrochemical plants across the United states to plough fracked gas into plastic. This ways more toxic air pollution and plastic in our oceans.

We need urgent action to accost the global plastic pollution epidemic.

Unfortunately, plastic is so durable that the EPA reports "every chip of plastic e'er fabricated nonetheless exists." All five of the Earth's major bounding main gyres are inundated with plastic pollution. The largest one has been dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a gyre of plastic debris in the n-cardinal Pacific Bounding main. Information technology's the largest aggregating of plastic in the globe. Just how large is information technology? Using the map below, click and drag around the garbage patch (shown in red.) If you lot're on mobile, zoom in and use two fingers to drag more easily.

A HEAVY TOLL ON WILDLIFE

Thousands of animals, from pocket-size finches to bluish whales, die grisly deaths from eating and getting defenseless in plastic.

• Fish in the North Pacific ingest 12,000 to 24,000 tons of plastic each twelvemonth, which can crusade intestinal injury and death and transfers plastic up the food chain to bigger fish, marine mammals and human being seafood eaters. A recent study found that a quarter of fish at markets in California contained plastic in their guts, mostly in the form of plastic microfibers.
• Ocean turtles tin mistake floating plastic garbage for food. They can choke, sustain internal injury and die — or starve by thinking they're total from eating plastic. Tragically, enquiry indicates that half of sea turtles worldwide have ingested plastic. New studies find plastic pollution is so pervasive on many beaches that its affecting their reproduction.
• Hundreds of thousands of seabirds ingest plastic every yr. Plastic ingestion reduces the storage book of the breadbasket, causing starvation. It's estimated that threescore percent of all seabird species have eaten pieces of plastic, with that number predicted to increment to 99 percent by 2050. Expressionless seabirds are oftentimes found with stomachs total of plastic, reflecting how the amount of garbage in our oceans has rapidly increased in the by 40 years.
• Marine mammals ingest, and get tangled up in, plastic. Large amounts of plastic debris have been found in the habitat of critically endangered Hawaiian monk seals, including in areas that serve equally pup nurseries. Entanglement in plastic debris has also led to injury and mortality in the endangered Steller sea lion, with packing bands the most mutual entangling material. Dead whales have been institute with bellies full of plastic.

FIGHTING Bounding main PLASTIC POLLUTION

The Heart for Biological Diversity is tackling this trouble on multiple fronts. We've petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Bureau asking the regime to regulate plastics as a pollutant under the Make clean H2o Act and will keep pushing for plastic pollution to be treated equally the hazardous waste product that it is.

We've sued companies that plow plastic into consumer goods to better control their runoff. We're challenging the permits needed to build those new ethane cracker plants and organizing grassroots resistance to stop them

There's still a lot of work to practise, simply nosotros're committed to the long struggle to reduce ocean plastic pollution.

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How Many Animals Die From Plastic Pollution Each Year

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