I didn’t know what to write about for this blog post, but school gave me an answer. In school, we are talking about the trash problem that we currently have. We spent some classes learning and talking about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP), a gyre of trash. The gyre is a rotating low and high current in an ocean. Any trash ending up in the ocean gets sucked toward the gyre and is trapped in there practically forever.
There is too much trash in the world. In the GPGP alone, the trash count is 1.8 trillion pieces, enough for every human being in the world to have 250 pieces. The GPGP isn’t the only gyre in the world, though. There are 5 main ones in our oceans right now, including the GPGP, which is the biggest one. Most of the waste going to the GPGP comes from North America. In the whole world, only 5 percent of trash thrown out is recycled. Considering the US alone throws out about 254 million tons of trash every year, imagine how much the world may be throwing out.
The GPGP also can do devastating things, such as harm marine life. One thing that kills marine life is ghost fishing. This event occurs when a plastic net trapps an organism and makes it not able to move. This makes an organism not able to swim, and this organism will eventually die if not rescued or freed. Animals also eat the plastic pieces in the ocean, a bad thing for the fish. When the fish do that, they start to feel as if they are full, and will end up starving to death. By 2050, the pieces of trash in our oceans may outnumber fish! Even birds can die of plastic in the ocean. They eat it in the water when they mistake it for fish. Ironically, what happened to the fish happens to the bird, and the bird dies, just wanting food.
The GPGP is a problem for the environment, and animals, but we will have garbage everywhere soon if we don’t act! Remember to recycle and reuse your plastic waste to help. I hope you learned something by reading this post, and I hope you do something about it, because face it or not, trash is ultimately everyone’s problem, and will require everyone’s solution to fix.
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