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Plastic waste relying on our oceans
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About 8 million tons of plastic are dumped into our oceans every year. Five trillion pieces of plastic are floating in our oceans worldwide. Over 80 percent of plastic leaks from land-based sources.
The plastic that surrounds our world finds its way to our clear blue waters every day. The plastic does not disappear, it continues to fill up our seas. The wind drags plastic bags to the ocean shores and once it drowns, many sea creatures pay the price of mistaking a plastic bag for a jellyfish as food. Oceans take up 71 percent of the Earth but 10 percent of that is overflowed with billions of plastics.
There is a myriad that we have not thought of that could help to reduce the number of plastic products that are dragged into our oceans. Plastic does not need to be completely removed from our daily lives, but it could be altered so that it does not end up in our landfills. Only 8.7 percent of our plastic is recycled including what rests in the recycling bin.
To reduce the usage of plastic bags is if we bring our own reusable bags to supermarkets. This will contribute less to our waste that will end up being carried by the oceans and waters on the Earth. There are a variety of ways to minimize the amount of plastic used every day. We can repurpose old bottles into snack containers to recycle plastic bottles. Plastic containers can also be for a sustainable garden to place plants and soil. Plastic packaging, such as bubble wrap, could use a different material. A sufficient packaging material to protect fragile items could be cardboard structures that hold them in place. Another material can be bamboo which easily bends and provides much more protection than the air-filled inside the plastic waste. These ideas not only save our oceans from the damages of plastic, but also create more proficiency in the products we use.
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