Plastic Pollution in Our Oceans is Choking Marine Life… And Us
Imagine waking up in a beautiful home, your dream home. It’s perfect for you, fits your needs and is exactly what you want.
Then slowly, over the years, more and more plastic garbage ends up in your yard, on your beautiful house, and makes its way inside your home. You begin waking up in the morning with plastic bags laying with you in bed. Tiny pieces of plastic begin showing up in your food. You step on plastic when you walk down the stairs to get a cup of coffee in the morning.
This plastic garbage accumulates to the point where you can’t live in your dream home anymore. Your beautiful house seems unliveable but you have no where else to go.
What can you do?
92% of all marine life is exposed to plastic and 10% consume this plastic
This is how it feels to live in the ocean.
Imagine being a fish or a large whale when 8 MILLION TONS of discarded plastic waste ends up where you’re living. You mistake a plastic bag for a jellyfish, you accidentally swallow tiny plastic pieces in addition to the fish you were eating, or large plastic pieces get stuck on your fins.
If you wouldn’t consider this acceptable in your home, then why is it acceptable for the undeserving marine life in the ocean?.
- Every year, approximately 100 million marine animals are killed by plastics.
- Entanglement and ingestion of plastic are the main killers of marine life and wreak havoc on ocean ecosystems.
- Animals that consume plastic suffer the many negative effects of the toxic chemicals that dissolve out of indigestible plastic in their stomachs.
- Animals can also become trapped in discarded fishing nets or larger plastics and can’t swim or break free.
The Solution Starts With You!
Acknowledging and reducing the amount of plastic waste you consume on a daily basis and raising awareness is a great step forward in the fight against ocean plastic pollution.
- Urge governments to change and better their waste management policies.
- Support organisations that are battling plastic pollution in your neighbourhood.
- Recognise that certain plastics can remain in our environment for hundreds of years.
- Take part in clean-ups – either at your local beach or harbour, or help with underwater debris removal
