Discuss. Read the magazine article + Take a minute to note down things made of ‘a minute to note down things made of iow entitled plastic that you use on a dally basis. How arownag a puaTiee Important is plastic In our lives? Why has the writer + What would life be ike without plastic? used that particular + What are the negative consequences of the title? ‘widespread use of plastic? ‘20th century. Disposable coffee cups, plastic stirrer, «+ How can we minimise the use of plastic? ‘and plates that could be tossed in the bin ‘improved! our lives. Global plastic production soared from 1.5 million tonnes in 1950 to nearly 200 million tonnes in 2002, ‘Today, it's reached the 300 million tonne mark. Reports of ocean garbage patches suggest that much of that 7 plastic eventually ends up in our seas. Take a boat out Y far enough and you'll witness bottles, toy figurines, roller DAO VV DBE 7 easton rm osama inuens ans sandals all floating around in the sea. A project called Teese Cleanup hos ben testing ating platoms -~ for collecting bigger bits of plastio, but they cannot deal ‘with microplastcs. Microplstics isthe technical torm for tiny pieces of plastic, They are so finely shredded by ovean ‘currents that they're impossible to spot from a boat and are easily mistaken for food by sea creatures. ‘Throwaway living took off in the second half of the Biwe study by Marcus Eriksen, one of the co-founders of § Gyres, the organisation that studies plastio pollution inthe seas, suggests that atleast ive trillion pieces of plastic, altogether weighing inat over 268,000 tonnes, are floating around near the surface of the sea. An incredible ©2 per cent of the pieces are microplastics. According to Eriksen, we'll have to live with what's already out there. “it's oingto sink, its going to get buried, it’s going to fosslize,” he says, “There's no efficient means to clean up Skm down on the ovean floor.” No one really knows what damage all that stranded microplastic is doing, but the hope is that once it's mixed up with the sediment, i's doing less of it. Yet the clouds of microplastics switing in the water column pose a problem. The debris s easy for marine life to swallow, put the gunk that the plastics collect - such as pollution and bacteria - are also a threat. ney 2014 ch ‘Alexandra Ter Halle joined the Seventh Continent Expedition to the north ‘Atlantic Ocean with the aim of analysing tie gunk. She collected samples and is now analysing her data back at Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, to work out why some plastics attract pollution as they age. “The difficulty lies inthe fact that there are so many plastics, of different colours, Shapes and compositions,” she says. “I's difficult to extract a trend from all those pieces.” Ter Halle believes the answer is prevention. She says that switching to biodegradable plastics could offer part of that solution, While the first generation of biodegradables just broke down into smaller pieces, the second generation may have some utility. Ter Halle suggests that they could, for instance, be handy for shopping bags. Dire tictasompson,amasne biologist at Plymouth University, believes thatthe very notion of biodegradable plasticis flawed. “The idea that you could build into @ plastic a feature that would enable it to fulfil it life in service without deteriorating and then, the minute it becomes an item Of litter, it somehow rapidly and harmlessly degrades... it kind of seems like you're aspiring towards the impossible,” he says. He recently attended a workshop in Portugal involving over 50 people from ‘around Europe, including scientists, policymakers and industry types eager to offer ideas for solving the problem, But there was a shortage of cutting-edge solutions. “From my perspective, there was nothing new from any ofthe participants,” he says. “A range of solutions are known to us, but t's more about translating that into action.” E® dramatically reduce the amount of plastic accumulating in the oceans, the ‘Toop! of producing and recycling plastics would have to become a closed one. This means that any material leaving the system ‘ag waste would enter it again as a renewable resource. One option is banning certain types of plastics for particular applications, such asthe plastic microbeads used in facial scrubs and toothpastes. These tiny particles - often measuring less than 1mm - wash straight down the sink and are too small to be filtered out at the waterworks. All plastic products would need to be designed with an end-of-life care package, ti siure sunbringdhe nlnatis,ncablan fo the areas means solving plastic pollution, ful stop.