Plastic dumped into oceans is killing millions of marine mammals every year and it is disturbing our ecosystem

Plastic, being lightweight and durable has become workhorse material of our economy and is widely used on daily basis but unfortunately, many plastic is thrown away after using only once. These plastics go to landfill sites and then dumped into oceans.

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Research says, eight million tons of plastic is dumped into oceans that is equal to one garbage truck of plastic, every minute. According to famous sailor Dame Ellen, it this continues, by 2050, there will be more plastic waste in sea then fish.

When we talk about ocean waste, plastic makes 90% of total waste. In one square mile of ocean, there are around 46,000 pieces of plastic. Every year one million marine mammals and sea birds are killed due to plastic in the oceans. As a result ocean ecosystem is destroyed and food chain is affected. Plastic is not easily decomposed and it takes around 100 to 1000 years to biodegrade plastic. In 2014 a broken piece of DVD case was found in stomach of dead whale.

56% of aquatic mammals has been affected due to plastic ingestion and ingestion rates is even high in some populations. It is more than 60% in seabirds and 100% in sea turtles. These mammals mistakenly take plastic for food and when they ingest it, it causes serious problems and threat to their life.

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Out of 78 million tons of total plastic production, 32% is dumped every year in oceans. This rate is expected to double by 2030 and four times by 2050. It means there will be 895 million tons of fish and 937 million tons of plastic in oceans by 2050.

Now a days, only 14% of worldwide plastic is recycled and 2% of it is reused in packaging. It means up to $120 billion is lost annually due to plastic.

It is not easy to solve this problem because plastic industry is producing more and more plastic due to pressure of growing demand. Bioplastics are more expensive than normally plastics and our recycling systems are also not much efficient.

Every year on Christmas Eve, people exchange gifts and they are wrapped in unnecessary and extra polystyrene packing which is hazard to environment. Ship crew should also be educated not to throw plastic is oceans.

There are many companies which are working to find solution. One of them is The Ocean Cleanup Company and it is finding cheap and efficient ways to clean up this mess. It plans to use large nets spreading over 100KM, which are anchored to bottom of Pacific Ocean. These nets will capture the plastic waste with the help of ocean currents and bring it back to the surface.

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Scientists have also another approach to solve this problem. They are using worms which will eat plastic. These worms are called wax worms and normally they feed on bee wax. Due to similar chemical structure, they can also eat polyethylene which is most common plastic.
These worms ingest polyethylene and convert it to ethylene glycol. Ethylene glycol is organic compound and is widely used in production of antifreeze and polyester fibers. 100 wax worms can easily biodegrade 92mg of polyethylene in just 12 hours, while naturally plastic takes 100 years to biodegrade.

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Researchers are hopeful to replicate the worms mechanism to implement it in alternate solutions. If we start reusing plastic packaging or convert it into other plastic products, we can reduce the amount of plastic which dumps into oceans.
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