New year, same plastic filled oceans

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The fastening speed of everyday culture has led to the use of cheap, quick, and easy materials in fashion and everyday materials. In a single day, almost 1 million tons of plastic waste will be produced. The equivalent of a dump truck filled waste is dumped into the ocean every single minute. And according to Project Clean Water, unless we change by 2030, this number will double. And by 2050, this number will quadruple, making it so that there would be more plastic in the ocean than there are fishes. 80% of all marine pollution is plastic. And of the plastics that we use, a good deal comes from plastic water bottles.

A million plastic water bottles are purchased across the world in a single minute. This may not seem as large of a problem at first sight. But of the water bottles produced, only 23% are recycled. The irony of the situation, is that the ocean fills the bottles that are later tossed. But for how long can we test our oceans? Through the ages of the production of plastic water bottles, 9% have been recycled. The other 91% ends up in our oceans. In order to save our oceans, these numbers must be reduced.

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The most difficult part of making the adjustment to reusable water is cost. At front sight, spending the average price of $1.29 for a 20-ounce plastic bottle sounds far better than spending $20-$40 for a reusable bottle. But in the long run, even when these reusable water bottles are bought in bulk, plastic water bottles prove to be 2,000 times more expensive than tap water, which in the United States is often safe enough to drink. Something that not many people realize is that plastic takes between 500 and 1000 years to degrade, and even then, it simply becomes microplastics.

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Although it's tempting to buy a bottle of cold water in the lunch line or grab a nice cold plastic bottle after a sports game, teens need to take steps to reduce their own individual plastic uses. As the future generation, we need to cut back on single-use plastics. This can easily be done by bringing reusable shopping bags when going to the mall or by packing sandwiches in containers rather than one-use plastic bags. Although the actions we take appear insignificant, our individual actions leave a growing ripple in the water, and positive change towards the future of our oceans.

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Citations

Boesler, Matthew. “Bottled Water Costs 2000 Times as Much as Tap Water.” Business Insider, 12 July 2013, www.businessinsider.com/bottled-water-costs-2000x-more-than-tap-2013-7.

Fava, Marta. “Ocean Plastic Pollution an Overview: Data and Statistics.” Ocean Literacy Portal, UNESCO, 9 May 2022, oceanliteracy.unesco.org/plastic-pollution-ocean/.

Laville, Sandra, and Matthew Taylor. “A Million Bottles a Minute: World’s Plastic Binge “as Dangerous as Climate Change.”” The Guardian, The Guardian, 28 June 2017, www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/28/a-million-a-minute-worlds-plastic-bottle-binge-as-dangerous-as-climate-change.

McGimpsey, Chelsea. “5 Reasons to Opt for Reusable Water Bottles – Project Clean Water.” Project Clean Water, 2022, projectcleanwater.org/5-reasons-to-opt-for-reusable-water-bottles/.

Mickletz, Becky. “The Real Bottled Water Cost.” Flowater, 2 July 2019, drinkflowater.com/the-real-cost-of-bottled-water-2/.

Petsko, Emily. “How Reusable Bottles and Containers Can Help Save the Ocean.” Oceana, 16 June 2021, oceana.org/blog/how-reusable-bottles-and-containers-can-help-save-ocean/.

UN Environment Programme. “Beat Plastic Pollution.” Www.unep.org, UNEP, 2022, www.unep.org/interactives/beat-plastic-pollution/.