essay 2 to 3 pages

We have very beautiful beaches and oceans around the world, which are contaminated with waste. These beaches and oceans are essential to the circle of life and should be taken care of, instead of the unfortunate tragedy we are witnessing nowadays. People go to the beach and have a good time, but when they leave they don’t throw their trash in the designated areas. They throw the trash on the beach, eventually, it will destroy the beautiful view, and more importantly, pollute the environment. Afterwards, it’s impossible to collect all the trash and dispose it properly, as some of it is blown away deep in the ocean by the wind. Then the currents and wind gather the trash in one place, forming a huge dumpster in the ocean called The Trash Vortex. The Trash Vortex is a remote patch in the North Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles away from human life. This area has other names like: “The Asian Trash Trail” or “The Eastern Garbage Patch”. In this remote patch, the garbage of human life is collecting in a spinning current so large that it resists precise measurement. Some may measure this patch as the size of Texas, but it’s very challenging to actually measure the patch as the size of it might change, and hoping it gets smaller. Although the trash vortex is remote, it can cause damages to the environment, it can kill marine life, and it can compromise human health.

The trash vortex can cause damages to the environment that cannot be fixed. This place is filled with more plastic than a landfill. Plastic is made out of harmful chemicals. These chemicals are toxic and they can harm the environment. Also in an article by Hoshaw, Lindsey, she wrote “PCBs, DDT and other toxic chemicals cannot dissolve in water, but the plastic absorbs them like a sponge”. Fortunately, there are a few organizations that aim for clean and healthy oceans and want to fight the problem of waste on beaches and oceans. I found an organization called “Greenpeace”. They are one of the organizations that aim for clean and healthy environment. They want to change the damages of our planet. In their words, “Greenpeace exists because this fragile earth deserves a voice. It needs solutions. It needs change. It needs action”. In their website, I discovered many facts about the waste on beaches and oceans. I found that waste on beaches, and oceans cause damage to the environment and that it will compromise the health of humans and marine life. It also threatens tourism and costs a lot for a removal. But the shocking fact is, around one hundred million tones of plastic are produced each year of which about ten percent ends up in the sea. And about twenty percent of this is from ships and the rest from land.

The trash vortex can kill marine life because of the trash and plastic in it. Plastic can be very harmful for marine life, which eventually will kill them. Sea turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, which is their favorite food. According to Greenpeace organization, “It has been estimated that over a million sea-birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement”. Sea birds and other marine mammals in this area have been found dead; their stomachs are filled with many different sizes of plastic items. This problem can also disturb marine food webs in the North Pacific. As tiny plastics and other waste collect on the surface of the ocean, they block the sunlight from reaching the algae and plankton below. Algae and plankton are the most common autotrophs in the marine food web. The autotrophs are organisms that can produce their own nutrients from sunlight, oxygen, and carbon. If algae and plankton communities are threatened, animals such as fish that feed on algae and plankton will have less food. And if fish starts to die, there will be less food for species like tuna and sharks.

The trash vortex can compromise human health because the fish in that area can digest harmful toxins. Later, the fish can swim to any nearby coast such as Hawaii and California, and can be caught by fishermen. This can fish can be later sold to the public and eaten by humans, which eventually will cause health problems. Additionally, if a plastic bottle is thrown in the ocean, the plastic bottle could possibly travel across the oceans, as they are all connected, and it could be anywhere else around the world. Now imagine ten millions of plastic is thrown in the ocean and some of it are in small fragment shape that can easily be digested by one of our main sources of food. As a result, the toxins of the plastics entered the food chain, and it’s threatening human health.

The trash vortex is remote from any coast, which makes it free from any country to take the blame. And because of that, no country is willing to provide funding to clean it. But the problem is, cleaning it is not easy. According to National Geography “Many pieces of debris are the same size as small sea animals, so nets designed to scoop up trash would catch these creatures as well. Even if we could design nets that would just catch garbage, the size of the oceans makes this job too time-consuming to consider. And no one can reach trash that has sunk to the ocean floor”. However, organizations are informing the public of the effects of waste on oceans, so that people would stop throwing their waste in oceans, and that will reduce the amount of waste thrown every year. Hopefully, factories stop wasting too to prevent the increase of trash in oceans.

Works Cited