Plastic Island
Posted by Core Mini Bins on April 10th, 2017
While many of us stare out our office windows and dream of vacationing on an island paradise in the middle of nowhere surrounded by sand, sun and ocean waves, sadly it seems that much of the world’s trash has beat us to it. It’s for this reason, the United States’ Midway Atoll, a remote island in the Pacific Ocean northeast of Hawaii and midway between North America and Asia, is the second largest protected area in the world. A mere five miles across, 500,000 acres of the surrounding reef is drowning in discarded plastics that never completely decompose to nothing. Experts believe there is nearly 5 trillion pieces of plastic in the world’s oceans. An area of ocean encompassing and stretching out beyond Midway is called North Pacific Gyre. It is the world’s biggest floating garbage patch.
Most of the garbage that lands here has traveled thousands of miles. Its last stop on land is mainly from the United States and China, but likely we have all made our own contribution to it. Probably long after your great-great grandparents have died, the plastic swirl around Midway will exist. Every plastic made since plastic was invented in 1907 still exists today. There will be more weight in plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050.
Activists call Midway, ‘Plastic Island’ because it is shored unmistakably by ‘new sand’ with multi-coloured plastic particles. Nano plastics and micro plastics end up in the millions of birds that gather there and in the stomachs of the fish, which in turn end up in the stomachs of bigger fish higher up the food chain. Some will even end up in our stomachs after commercial fishing. Everything from plastic bags and plastic sandals to motorcycle helmets and car parts can be seen lining the new sand. With tons of garbage washing up on the shores of Midway daily, clean up is a fruitless endeavor. Heaps of bagged trash lay on the runway demonstrating an effort made in vain. Five tons of it comes annually from birds that die and decay on the island leaving plastic that was once inside their stomachs. To make maters worse for the health of marine life, scientists are now discovering the possibility that some prefer eating growth-stunting micro-plastics to their natural food source. Some U.S government studies conclude that plastic, such as styrene, is carcinogenic to humans. They estimate that Europeans dining on shellfish could be eating 11,000 pieces of micro-plastic each year.
Realistically nothing can be done to curb the tide of plastic discard unless it’s done en-masse. “Reuse, reduce, recycle” has never been so dire a habit to impart. A reduction in unnecessary packaging, reusable coffee cups, utensils and shopping bags, for example, could make waves across the globe that may save the lives of more marine life and even loved ones digesting plastics in microscopic amounts.
