Our World - Plastic Impact Blog - Introduction

Our World - Plastic Impact Blog

An informative blog written by concerned grade 8 students who want to raise awareness about plastic pollution and its impact on the environment.
We want to encourage you to make better choices and say no to single-use plastics!

Introduction - Welcome

Did you know that every year we produce 300 million tonnes of waste that is equal to the weight of the ENTIRE human population.

Welcome, our blog is to inform people around the world about what plastic pollution is, and the impact it has on our world. We will address a number of topics over the next 15 weeks and will provide solutions for a plastic-free world. We will be updating our blog every Friday.

Did you know? - 8 million metric tons of plastic enter our oceans everyday?

Introduction - Plastic Pollution

When did we start using plastics so often? The first synthetic plastic was used in 1907, which marked the start of the era of plastic. But we only started to produce plastics drastically during the 1950s. Since the 1950s, we've produced more than 380 million tonnes of plastic!

Every time you take a walk outside, or you happen to walk on a beach, you may have seen a piece of plastic laying around. Why? It's because of how rapidly humans produce plastic and throw it out only after using it ONLY once.

Plastics are made with a low cost and have added chemicals that make the plastic easy to stretch which increases the lifespan of the plastic. It takes more than 400 years for plastics to decompose. We use plastics so often in our lives ; we use it for food packaging and for many other things. Only a little part of the plastic we produce is being recycled. So, where is this trash going?

Most of the plastic we throw out is going into our oceans, or they enter our rivers that also lead to the plastics to enter our oceans. The plastic circulates through ocean currents to destinations like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (read our next update to learn more!) or Henderson Island. Henderson Island is an island that has about 38 000 000 pieces of plastic, yet nobody lives on the island. It has the world’s highest density of trash, and there has been trash found from Japan, Russia and many other countries. It is estimated about 3,500 pieces of plastic wash up on the Island everyday.

After the plastic enters our waters, it is very difficult to clean up the plastic mainly because the larger pieces of plastic become smaller pieces. This can be a problem because microplastics are not visible to the naked eye, thus making it harder to clean up. What are the consequences of using single-use plastic? some of the plastics that end up in our water become smaller pieces that end up in our water! If we don't change our habits soon, there will be more plastic than fishes there are fishes in our oceans by 2050. Make Changes Now!

Visit our Instagram Account @eliminate_single_use_plastics and continue to read our weekly updates to learn more!

Did you know that most of the world's plastic was just made within the past 15 years?