Ocean Pollution:Plastics

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UNIT REVIEW: Types of sea or marine pollution..

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Rubbish Industrial Sewage Agri.

Oil Shipping Radioactive Noise

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What are we learning?

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• What is the plastic problem?• Why is it important?• Which areas are affected? By the end of the lesson..

• Scale and seriousness of problem• Two main threats to wildlife• How plastic gets into oceans• Areas where plastic builds up• What happens to plastic over time

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Sea or marine pollution is…

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The contamination of the sea by substances that are harmful to living organisms as a result of human activity.

Biodegrade: a process that enables a substance to break down into natural materials in the environment without causing harm.

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What is marine rubbish?

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• 90% of marine rubbish is plastic • Approx. 10% of all plastic we use ends up in sea –much of this is plastic bottles, plastic bags, foam and packaging [UK bins around 16 million plastic bottles every day]

• Plastic does not biodegrade easily – some sinks, some floats - over time it gets broken down into ‘plastic confetti’, then gradually into microscopic ‘plastic dust’ by sun (‘photo-degradation’)

• Recent global estimate of 8 million metric tons of plastic waste entering the ocean each year

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Why is this important?• Wildlife damage: plastic kills through entanglement & poisoning - it could wipe out life in our oceans

• Micro-plastics are magnets for highly toxic chemicals

• Ellen MacArthur’s foundation: by 2050 the world’s oceans expected to contain more plastics than fish by weight

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Where does it come from?

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• 80% of marine litter comes from land sources transported by wind and rivers

• 20% from sea-based sources – ships (fishing boats, cruise liners, etc) and marine platforms

• It can travel immense distances!

Where does it all go?• ALL oceans are affected• Coastal areas, inland seas, mid-ocean gyres

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Major Ocean Currents and Gyres

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Planet’s 5 Gyres

Coasts and enclosed seas

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Explore Interactive Map

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http://app.dumpark.com/seas-of-plastic-2/

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Worksheet

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What have we learnt?• We know that plastic we throw away often

finds its way into the sea• It becomes a major problem throughout

the world because it does not biodegrade quickly

• It kills lots of wildlife..and has risks to humans

• All oceans affected but specific areas are badly affected – coasts, inland seas, gyres

Next time… we’ll look at solutions to clear up the mess! Please bring your ideas.

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Solutions – for next lesson• recycle and reuse more • cut down on plastic use - tend to be very successful on small, regional scales, as seen in cities like Los Angeles. • On that scale, legal and international policies will need to be implemented to see real change. In 1975, the London

Convention attempted to set the framework for regulation of deliberate disposal in oceans. This was the first step in major international ocean pollution policy. The US Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972 did a lot to save ecosystems in the US. However, the US Marine, Debris, Research, Prevention, and Reduction Act of 2006 is the policy that really took crucial steps to identify, locate, and fix marine debris pollution. It was one of the first times that a major developed, yet polluting country attempted to prevent plastic pollution and clean it up. These policies have seen success, but mostly with developed nations and especially, the US. In these countries, the science and funding have the ability to identify and solve the issue. They have an incentive.

• developing nations have not addressed the issue and continue to pollute plastic at very high rates. There is no real international policy to research, prevent, and fix this problem. Thus, it is only with the help of recycling and reducing plastic locally that international policy could possibly finish solving the problem. It would work on a global scale, rather than regional. However, that is just the issue. The possibility of executing real international policy is small due to the decisions of developing countries.

• requires a substantial, sustained integrated effort from individuals, industry, governments, and international governmental organizations at local to regional and global scales.

• Global production of plastics increased annually from two million metric tons in 1950 to over 400 million metric tons in 2015 - Of the total amount of plastics produced from 1950 to 2015, roughly half was produced in just the last 13 years

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17

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https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2017.00030/full