Our Ocean, Our Future
The United Nations has designated 8 June as World Oceans Day. The World Oceans Day is a day for humanity to celebrate the ocean. This year’s theme is ” The Ocean: Life and Livelihoods”.
WE MADE PLASTIC. WE DEPEND ON IT. NOW WE’RE DROWNING IN IT.
The miracle material has made modern life possible. But more than 40 percent of it is used just once, and it’s choking our waterways.
Meanwhile, ocean plastic is estimated to kill millions of marine animals every year. Nearly 700 species, including endangered ones, are known to have been affected by it. Oceans cover over 75% of the Earth. And yet, we have managed to pollute them to an extent that marine life is in more danger than it has been during the history of civilisation.
No one knows how much unrecycled plastic waste ends up in the ocean, Earth’s last sink. In 2015, Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia engineering professor, caught everyone’s attention with a rough estimate: between 5.3 million and 14 million tons each year just from coastal regions. Most of it isn’t thrown off ships, she and her colleagues say, but is dumped carelessly on land or in rivers, mostly in Asia. It’s then blown or washed into the sea. Imagine five plastic grocery bags stuffed with plastic trash, Jambeck says, sitting on every foot of coastline around the world—that would correspond to about 8.8 million tons, her middle-of-the-road estimate of what the ocean gets from us annually. It’s unclear how long it will take for that plastic to completely biodegrade into its constituent molecules. Estimates range from 450 years to never.
#saveocean#
saveoceanfromplastic
#saynotoplastic
#savemarinelife
#saveaquaticlife
#worldoceanday
#BeHappy
Comments
Post a Comment