ocean Archives -

11 facts not to use plastic and what we could do about it.

Currently, I am in the beautiful island of Puerto Rico, I pick up trash every time I go anywhere on this island since it has become a landfill, I find many plastic cups, bags, straws that would all end up in the ocean and suffocating the species that call this world home if no one picked it up.

But no one gives a damn since we live in a world where people no longer respect life. So much plastic and for what, we buy cups and Use it only once and then throw it wherever and so it continues. We use shopping bags for one or two things only because it’s convenient.

It’s not only here, but in many parts of our world. I think we must stop using plastic cups, bags, and everything else made from it. Stop using things that continue to contribute to this world we have created. So much plastic that we are drowning in garbage.

I do this protest so that the people could understand. More photo here.

But it is that people want convenience. They do not want to bring things that have to be washed later. And we continue every week with mountains of garbage on top of more trash, since people’s minds are full of garbage that they do not think of the effects they cause and thus we continue to contribute to this inundation.

Here in Puerto Rico, the government is passing a law banning plastic bags. But it is sad that people need the government to tell them they have to stop using it. When people should be more aware of how we live in this world and the impact we create. People will continue to use bags until they prohibit it, when they could stop now.

11 reasons to stop using plastic

44 percent of all seabird species, 22 percent of cetaceans, all sea turtle species and a growing list of fish species have been documented with plastic in or around their bodies..
Billions of pounds of plastic can be found in swirling convergences in the oceans making up about 40 percent of the world’s ocean surfaces. 80 percent of pollution enters the ocean from the land.
Annually approximately 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide. More than one million bags are used every minute.
Plastic in the ocean breaks down into such small segments that pieces of plastic from a one liter bottle could end up on every mile of beach throughout the world.
Plastic chemicals can be absorbed by the body—93 percent of Americans age six or older test positive for BPA (a plastic chemical).
It takes 500-1,000 years for plastic to degrade.
50 percent of the plastic we use, we use just once and throw away.
Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the earth four times.
Americans throw away 35 billion plastic water bottles every year, now multiply that number with the rest of the world
Plastic constitutes approximately 90 percent of all trash floating on the ocean’s surface, with 46,000 pieces of plastic per square mile.
One million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals are killed annually from plastic in our oceans.

Ways to stop using plastic

If each person brought their own cups and plates and washed it when they get home, we could eliminate much of the waste that we contribute to. Use reusable glass bottles or metal containers.
We should no longer accept bags and instead use bags made out of fabric. We could do our part to improve our world and stop contributing because you are all complicit for continuing to use plastic.
Spread the word. Talk to your family and friends about why it is important to reduce the plastic in our lives and the impact of the pollution.
I know it’s hard to completely ban the use of it, but if you must use it for certain things. recycle. I know there are many places recycle in mostly every city.

“Plastic should be a high value material… [It] should be in products that last a long time, and at the end of the life, you recycle it. To take oil or natural gas that took millions of years to produce and then to make a disposable product that last minutes or seconds, and then to just discard it–I think that’s not a good way of using this resource. (Robert Haley)”
― Susan Freinkel,

We need to change our mentality. Change how we view our world. What type of world do you want to leave for the future and the species that inhabit it? I implore you to change your ways. The change starts with us.

If you see garbage, straws, bottle caps, bags, pick it up wherever you might be. Here I wrote about a challenge, where if everyone picked up just one bagful of garbage, we could start changing things.

Here I posted a video, when birds eat plastic.

Watch this video by surfriders