A Masked but Imminent Scandal

Something scandalous is happening and it needs to stop immediately or else...

So many materials being made out of plastic are being produced daily but so few are going to dumps or recycling centres. So then where are the little styrofoam balls, plastic bags, general litter and also exfoliants in your shower scrubs. There could be many answers to that, but the most common and simplest answer would be: the oceans.

There are about 5 gyres on this planet: the North and South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic Gyres and the Indian Gyre. They are basically ocean currents formed by global wind patterns and Earth’s rotation. These are so immense and powerful that they drive the ‘ocean conveyor belt’ which is basically how the oceans move around the continents. These used to be massive areas of swirling water where the water would get sucked into the bottom. But now, they are swirling garbage patches.

In 1998, Capt. Charles Moore discovered that the North Pacific Gyres had acquired around 18 million tons of plastic. The weight of plastic on the oceans surface was about 6 times as much as the weight of plankton. He deducted that the only reasons landfills weren’t getting filled up to the brim was that most of the plastic waste managed to get sucked into these even vaster gyres. According to Plastic Oceans, we have produced and trashed more plastic into the seas in the last decade then we have produced over the whole of last century. From his travels in the North Pacific, he found out that a fish, only 2.5 inches long, had 84 pieces of plastic.

You might be misunderstanding plastic’s recyclability. Plastics are biodegradable but just not in a practical time frame. Plastics are compounds made of Carbon and Hydrogen. These compounds are extremely hard to break through. Naturally, only UV rays can break these apart. But since so much of the World’s plastic is in water, the plastic will be shielded by the water’s damp and cold conditions. Even after millions of years to come, some plastics may not have decomposed. Those who have, well; they’ll become small granules of plastic pellets that will be just the right size for some innocent sea creature.

According to Mr. Raisdana, he finds the fact that we have trashed more plastic in the last decade then we have produced in the decade before. “Even with all these environmentalist groups, we are still making a ton of plastic. The interesting thing is, even though we have come so far and are always told about how plastic is, we have not really done much about it.” When asked about how he has contributed to it, he says, “I have always taken bags to grocery stores instead of taking the plastic bags and while collecting vegetables. I also try and educate my kids about how the plastic toys that they buy eventually become into waste that goes into the ocean. But, I think everyone has a hand in this.” When asked about what would happen to the plastic if we stopped producing it, he stated “We’re going to need to find a way to collect all the plastic and do something with it. We can’t just pretend there’s no plastic if we can’t see it.” This reveals that even adults struggle to bring about change. Even though we understand about this problem, are we doing much?

Out of 22 students and 1 teacher, only 5 of them knew about gyres, let alone the plastic in them. This raises a serious problem that connects with that Mr. Raisdana talks about. Things that happen beyond our vision and hearing are ignored or often not even cared about. There is still hope, as Mr. Anthony Andrady, a senior research scientist, has pointed out that microbes might be able to evolve and mutate into species that could break down or even better, consume plastics. Till then, all we can do is hope.

A fellow writer, Roshan, also writing about plastics commented on this. “Gyres are natural water systems caused by tectonic plates moving. They can be very dangerous at times. They mostly end up sucking in plastics.” When asked about what the problem here is he stated, “The plastics are killing the ecosystems. The very fish that we eat are eating plastics before being caught in fisher nets. We’re slowly but surely going to run out of clean water at this rate.”

Do we really want this to become of our only planet? Can we contain the throwaway society, or has it become to widespread for anyone to stop? Can we afford this scandal to happen? Are we that willing to lay waste to our home planet? As people have said: “There is no Planet B.”

“All the King’s horses and all the King’s men, will never gather up all the plastic and put the ocean back together again.” by Charles Moore

By Kunal