SEP 2019 - ISSUE 11

A DISEASE CALLED
PLASTIC
By Jade Nelson

" EACH ONE OF US CAN MAKE

A DIFFERENCE.  T OGETHER WE
MAKE CHANGE " - BARBARA
MIKULSKI

1907, The Birth of

Plastic has become a disease. Like cancer plastic is
an abnormal cell in the ocean, those cells grow

Plastic
uncontrollably, without the ocean being able to do
anything about it. The cells then form massive
tumour-like garbage patches that are set to slowly
Plastic is a man-made material made from
take over the earth's surface. As the human
polymers that chemists rearrange to create an
population is ever-growing we are not helping
almost infinite variety of different of plastic which
cure the plastic disease. Plastic pollution is one of
can be used in almost anything, including toys,
the fastest-growing forms of pollution affecting
cups, bottles, bags, straws, nets and toothbrushes.
our environment today. Every year over 8 million
8% of the world's annual oil production is used to
tonnes of plastic enters our oceans and of that
make and power the production of plastic, by
80% comes from land for example plastic bags,
2020 the amount of oil used for production is set
straws and bottles. The other 20% is remaining
to increase by 20%. Asia is the biggest producer of
fishing debris such as ghost nets and fishing line.
plastic, producing half of the world's plastic. The
Consumers are using around 500 billion single-use
top 5 largest plastic producers being, China,
plastic bags a year, this is almost 1 billion bags a
Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam and Sri Lanka. 
minute or 150 bags per person per year. If you
Everything around us features some form of
connected all of these bags end to end they would
plastic, from plastic toys and plates to face wash
circumnavigate the earth 4,200 times. As the
and bubble gum. 40% of plastic is packaging that is
plastic disease grows and expands it takes the
only used once before being thrown away. Plastics
lives of millions of innocent sea creatures and sea
don’t only come in large pieces they come in tiny
birds and is making its way up the food chain into
fragments that can sometimes not be seen with
the bodies of humans. Maybe plastic really is like
the naked eye.
cancer.
These are called micro-plastics. Micro-plastics are
Every year 1 million seabirds die from plastic
defined as pieces that are smaller than five
pollution because once ingested plastic cannot
millimetres. They are found in cosmetics and
break down it just accumulates in the stomachs of
toothpaste as well as in the ocean broken down by
the birds and causes them to starve to death
UV radiation. Estimates say that there are 51
because the plastic is stopping food from being
trillion pieces of micro-plastics floating in the
processed. As well as the seabirds 100,000 marine
ocean this means that there is more micro-plastic
mammals are dying each year from becoming
in the ocean than stars in the galaxy. Micro-
entangled in ocean plastic or mistaking it for food.
plastics have been found in honey, sea salt, beer,
In March 2019 a young whale was found dead off
tap water and household dust. 83% of tap water
the coast of the Philippines. The whale was taken
samples contain micro-plastics, resulting in the
back to a lab to undergo a necropsy, where a
fact that 93% of people have plastic in their urine.
shocking 40 kg of plastic pollution was found in
Did you know that in the 2 minutes it has taken
the whale's stomach, this is equivalent to the
you to read this, 2 million plastic bottles have been
average weight of a twelve-year-old. Inside the
bought and only 1 in 4 will be recycled leaving the
whale, 16 rice sack bags were found along with
other 3 in 4 bottles with the chance to end up in
many plastic bags and snack bags and huge tangles
the ocean. They say plastic just takes a long time
of nylon rope. The plastic was packed so densely
to decompose, but truthfully plastic cannot
that if felt as “hard and compacted as a baseball,”
disappear, it breaks up into millions of tiny pieces
the plastic accounted for 8% of the whale’s body
so small they are invisible, but they are always
weight. The whale died because there was no food
there.
being processed through its stomach and its body
was destroying itself from the inside, the plastic
could not be broken down by the whale’s stomach
acids, instead they burnt holes in the whale's
stomach lining.

Impacts on Marine
Life
The ocean covers 71% of the earth's surface and
accounts for 50-80% of all life on earth. Plastic
pollution in the ocean is growing exponentially, it
is estimated that by 2050 plastic pollution will
outweigh the amount of fish in the ocean. Plastic
in the ocean has caused almost 90% of all seabirds
to have ingested plastic at some point and by 2050
every sea bird will have ingested plastic some
form of ocean plastic.
How To Stop This
Crisis
The only way to stop the plastic pollution crisis is
to ban together each making a small difference to
create a big change. Alice Pidd, a marine biologist
believes the way to help fix the plastic pollution
crisis is “we need far more involvement from
politicians, particularly in making policy-based
changes to our current methods of environmental
management. We also need more investment in
sustainable resources and technological
innovations that reduce waste and lessen our
carbon footprint”. Currently, around the world,
127 countries have placed regulations on plastic
bags such as bans or phaseouts. In Australia alone
getting rid of single-use plastic bags at Coles and
Woolworths has prevented 1.5 billion bags from
entering the ocean. The best thing we can do is
work on changing our communities attitudes
towards recycling waste, refusing plastic and
educating people about the many simple things we
can change in our everyday lives to help

The plastic disease crisis does not look like it is

going to slow down unless we make a change.
Humans are the only ones who can fix this and
between the 7.7 billion people inhabiting this
planet, a change can be made. It starts with you.