TOPIC: Plastic pollution in our waterways

OPINION: That certain plastics should be banned

TONE: Reasonable, disappointed, persuasive

PURPOSE: To persuade people to not use and that it is killing our wildlife

STRUCTURE PLAN: (Note: You do not need to follow this plan as your paragraphs. You can
vary them and make some shorter/ longer like we have been doing in class)

Jab 1 – causes of the problem – Littering,

Jab 2 – consequences/future –
Damages soil and poisons groundwater. Can cause serious health impacts.

Oceans will be filled with plastic. Extinction for some marine wildlife. It will look disgusting and
a majority of people will probably skip swimming.

Contributes to climate change. Toxins released - carbon cycle. The future of our planet - it
could all end. BIG from a LITTLE thing.

KP

Let’s make a change – solutions – Beeswax wraps, reusable drink bottles and containers,
metal straws, paper bags, make people more aware of this situation.

LOGOS - logical arguments

PATHOS - emotional arguments
ETHOS - authority/credibility

Facts, statistics and quotes:

(list your facts and statistics here….) make sure you source where they are from
Source link Information found

Top 10 countries doing the In 2008, Rwanda became the world's first 'plastic-free' nation, 10
most to tackle plastic years after it introduced a ban on all plastic bags and plastic
pollution. packaging. Unlike many other countries, the African nation is strict
at enforcing its ban. Anyone caught with a plastic item in the country
 faces a jail sentence of up to six months.

100+ Ocean Pollution
Statistics & Facts 2023.
100 million marine animals die each year from plastic waste alone.
100,000 marine animals die from getting entangled in plastic yearly
– this is just the creatures we find! 1 in 3 marine mammal species
get found entangled in litter, 12-14,000 tons of plastic are ingested
by North Pacific fish yearly.

Plastic pollution: facts &
figures - Surfers Against
Sewage
12 million tonnes of plastic finds its way into the ocean every single
year. 9.5 million tonnes of this enters the ocean from the land with
1.75 tonnes being chucked into the sea directly from the fishing and
shipping industry.
There are approximately 51 trillion microscopic pieces of plastic,
weighing 269,000 tons.

Word bank: (it is useful to identify some strong word choices which you might use in your
writing to help position your reader)

Consequences of plastic in our waterways

Drowning, suffocation, trapped or choking. All of these life threatening issues are happening
to our marine wildlife because of our use of plastic, and sadly some animals are very close to
extinction because of our lack of caring for the environment. But it’s not just our turtles
choking on plastic bags they thought were jellyfish, or penguins trapped in plastic 6-pack rings
and drowning in the water that should be their safe place. Our soil is being poisoned by
chemicals leaching out, and our planet’s actual existence is under threat. It's critical for us to
raise awareness and take action to reduce the amount of plastic that we use daily.

The most common plastic that is usually seen floating in our waterways is single-use plastic
eg. plastic bottles, plastic bags and plastic packaging. Since these single-use plastic items
are so easily found in shops, people carelessly dump them because they know they can get a
new one just down the street at the grocery store. My point is, if it was a really special and
expensive bag you would want to keep it safe and treasure it for the rest of your life right?
From this “100 million marine animals die each year from plastic waste alone. 100,000 marine
animals die from getting entangled in plastic yearly – this is just the creatures we find!”, states
Condor Ferries. And this is just because we can’t be bothered disposing of our plastic waste
properly.
What happens at sea stays at sea, right? Wrong. Every year, 12 million tonnes of
indestructible plastic ends up in our lakes, rivers and oceans. That’s huge. Marcus Eriksen, a
world leader against plastic pollution, tells us exactly how huge. “There are approximately 51
trillion microscopic pieces of plastic, weighing 269,000 tons.” To help us picture this better,
this weighs the same as 45 Eiffel Towers, or 134,500 African elephants. The lethal chemicals
released from plastic are escaping from the waterways, and poisoning the soil and
groundwater. This flows on through the food chain, plants and animals are consuming these
toxins, and the Royal Society says that because these are our life supply of food, our health is
getting affected too, like damaging our hormones and even our DNA. And those toxins don’t
just go there…they also affect the carbon cycle. 1 tonne of plastic releases 2.5 tonnes of
CO2, and due to climate change and fossil fuels, the carbon cycle can’t handle much more.
And if that doesn’t change, we are talking about the future of our planet…it could all end. That
seems such a big result from such a little thing…one plastic bag.

But it’s not one plastic bag. It’s all the plastic bags that we have all used, so it’s our
responsibility to solve this problem. Recently people have come up with amazing and
inspirational ideas to limit our use on plastic, for example Beeswax wraps created by Toni
Desrosiers in 2008. Toni’s mission was to create a sustainable item that you can reuse to
wrap your food in. This was a replacement for the metres of glad wrap we used and threw
away. Some people have been coming with good ideas for centuries. For example, there is a
metal reusable drink bottle invented by Sir James Dewar in 1896. James' goal was to create a
reusable water bottle that you can reuse for a long period of time. It’s the simple and small
creations like this that are so very helpful for us and our planet. But there are some people
who are doing an even better job, like the citizens of Rwanda. “In 2008, Rwanda became the
world's first 'plastic-free' nation, 10 years after it introduced a ban on all plastic bags and
plastic packaging. Unlike many other countries, the African nation is strict at enforcing its ban.
Anyone caught with a plastic item in the country faces a jail sentence of up to six months”,
claims Lori Campbell from Good with Money. Maybe we need to get this tough all around the
world.