trash

Trash in Our Oceans:

People who find trash on the beach often think that it was left there by previous beach goers. While this is true, and unfortunately not uncommon, there are many factors that contribute to polluted waters. First you should understand how water systems such as lakes, rivers, creeks, and most importantly - watersheds, work. A watershed is an area of land that drains all the streams and rainfall to a common outlet such as the outflow of a reservoir, mouth of a bay, or any point along a stream channel. Put basically, any area of land that water flows through can be thought of as a watershed. This water finds its way into our oceans and is guaranteed to be already polluted.
Using the Los Angeles Storm Drain system as an example, we can take a closer look at how pollution enters our ocean. Run-off draining from our streets enters our gutters which makes its way to a catch basin. Catch basins are the entry point to the oceans. This system was created to catch water, but with no treatment of filtration process in place, it gathers trash, automobile run-off such as oil and anti-freeze, pesticides, chemicals, metals, bacteria, and more. According to the Los Angeles Storm Drain website (http://www.lastormwater.org), Approximately 100 million gallons of water flow through Los Angeles' storm drain system on an average dry day. When it rains, the amount of water flowing through the channels can increase to 10 billion gallons. All of this water makes its way to the ocean and along with it carries various forms of trash and pollution.
Trash in our oceans kill marine life and destroys the quality of the water. The worst form of trash in the ocean? Plastics. Plastic material is not biodegradable. Instead it breaks down in a process called photo-degradation, breaking up into smaller and smaller pieces using the sun’s UV rays. These pieces, along with many other forms of plastic (notably plastic bags), resemble food to marine life. Each year, over one million seabirds and one-hundred thousand marine mammals die from ingestion of or entanglement in plastics. Plastic material absorbs chemicals. such as PCBs and DDT, that are dangerous for marine life - and humans as well! When small fish ingest plastic, the chemicals from the plastic are absorbed into the tissue of the fish. Smaller fish are then eaten by larger fish and the chemicals are then absorbed in the tissue of the larger fish. This is called bioaccumulation. Bioaccumilation that happens in larger fish, such as tuna and shark, can be harmful to humans.

While plastics have proven beneficial in many regards, they also pose a significant threat to our marine environments. Virtually every piece of plastic that has ever been produced still exists in some shape or form. With world wide population growth, we also deal with a garbage crisis. Landfills are filling up, and the space for more are decreasing. The demand for single-use plastics has driven plastic production to all time highs. In the United States alone, over 24 billion pounds of single use plastic packaging is produced each year. Currently only >25% of all plastics are recycled.