The Yangtze, the world’s third-longest river, “is the largest contributing catchment” dumping some 330,000 tonnes of plastic into the East China Sea, which is followed by the Ganges River.41 million tonnes of plastic into the sea every year, an amount that needs between 48,000 to over 100,000 dump trucks to carry it away.It is high time we understand that plastic, including biodegradable plastic, not only takes years to decompose in our environment but rarely fully disappears.Further, plastics contain additives and chemicals that are added to improve the desirable properties of the plastic product, for exampl
So the best thing we can do to protect our waterways is try to keep as much plastic as possible out of the waste stream in the first place. Microplastics can be consumed by a diverse array of marine organisms, across trophic levels, including zooplankton, bivalves, barnacles, fish, turtles and birds.Plastics A series of package pouches and film rolls Suppliers in the marine environment are of increasing concern because of their persistence and effects on oceans, wildlife, and especially on humans.Microplastics are particles less than five mm in size that deteriorate from larger plastic pieces that have entered the oceans.5 billion metric tons of solid waste. Several broad classes of plastics are used in packaging: Polyethyelene (PE), Polypropylene (PP), Polystyrene (PS), Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and Polyvinyl chloride (PVC). POPs) and to leaching of plasticisers that are considered toxic. Of that, 275 million metric tons was plastic, and an estimated 8 million metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste entered the ocean in 2010. No matter how inconvenient the truth, it is important that as citizens we take action and change our consumption patterns in favour of alternatives to plastics so that we can minimise our exposure to harmful additives and also help our environment. According to a 2012 survey, 4,360 tons of microbeads were used throughout all European Union countries in that year alone.e, antioxidants, light-stabilisers, slip additives, etc which may leach out under conditions of use and accumulate in the environment and gradually end up intruding into the food web. These tiny particles easily pass through water filtration systems and end up in the ocean, posing a potential threat to aquatic life. Microplastics come from a variety of sources, including from larger plastic debris that degrades into smaller and smaller pieces.1) Refuse disposable plastic whenever and wherever possible.
POPs, the hazardous human-made chemical that occurs universally in sea water at very low concentrations, are picked up by microplastics via partitioning and the hydrophobicity of POPs facilitate their concentration in the microplastic litter. Their use has increased 20-fold in the past half-century and is expected to double again in the next 20 years. A recent significant finding is that minute fragments of plastic debris, termed microplastics, occur in oceans worldwide.In the light of growing apprehension regarding ocean pollution, and considering the broad range of products from which this pollution originates, it is no surprise that tiny plastic particles can accumulate to such quantities as 93-236 thousand tons floating in the oceans as predicted by a recent study in Environmental Research Letters. Today, it seems that no part of the ocean is safe from plastic trash. 3) Reuse durable, non-toxic straws, utensils, to-go containers, bottles, bags, and other everyday items. In a study published in Science journal, around 192 countries whose coastlines are bordered by the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, Mediterranean and Black Seas, produced a total of 2.The author is Senior Scientist at Council for Scientific and Industrial Research- National Institute of Oceanography, Goa .Owing to their small size, microplastics are considered bio-available to organisms throughout the food-web.5 million tonnes in 1950 to 299 million tonnes in 2013, representing a four percent increase over 2012
留言列表
