scrAPES #2 "Plastic in the Ocean Podcast"

The podcast I listened to was all about the plastic problem in the world. Almost 8 million metric tons of waste ends up in the ocean every year. 80% of the waste are coming from land and the other 20% is coming from cargo-ships and containers. There is so much waste and plastic in the ocean that there is a huge area called the Great Pacific garbage patch. In the middle of the Pacific ocean the water currents go around in a circular formation which causes the all the waste to go to the middle. In 10 years there will be equal to 1 ton of plastic to 3 tons of fin fish (Fish with fins). From the 8 million tons of waste 50% of the waste comes from 5 rapidly developing countries in Asia and Southeast Asia. The United States is also in the top 20 for most generated waste. We need to be more like Sweden! Sweden produces 1/5 of the waste

The most interesting about this podcast to me was all the metric tons of waste that ends up in the ocean. Also, what interested me about this podcast was that 20% of the waste came from ships and the big containers on those ships. A connection I am making is when I heard about the trash problem we had but I did not know how serious it was.

This podcast is very important to environmental science because the plastic affects all of our resources. The plastics can affect our food and water resources. I think what we can do is while having trash bins on every block and street can reduce the waste but also having a recycling bin next to them. This helps reduce the waste go down and it will be a lot more convenient.