Plastic do harm to the ocean which should be pay more attention

On December 30, according to the BBC report, the United Nations has issued a warning that millions of tons of plastic garbage into the ocean every year, and is causing "irreparable damage", marine life is facing a tremendous threat. Lisa Svensson, UN marine director, said: "This is a global crisis and we are destroying the marine ecosystem."

But how does this happen? What kind of harm would these plastic rubbish cause?

To the best of our knowledge, plastic was not widely used until about 60-70 years ago, but it immediately changed everything from clothing, cooking, food and beverage to product design, engineering and retail. There are many different types of plastics. One of their greatest strengths is their long design life, and almost all plastic products now exist in some form.

In July of this year, Roland Geyer, an industrial ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara and his colleagues published a paper in Science of Progress that calculates what humans have so far done all plastic is 8.3 billion tons. Approximately 6.3 billion tons of these are now plastic wastes, and 79% of these plastic wastes are disposed of in landfills or in the natural environment. And plastic recycling such as polystyrene recycling is little. This huge waste is driven by modern life. In modern life, plastic is made into many "disposable" items, from drink bottles, diapers to cutlery and cotton swabs.

Beverage bottles are one of the most common plastic trash. In 2016, about 480 billion plastic bottles were sold globally, reaching 1 million bottles per minute. Of these, 110 billion bottles are produced by beverage giant Coca-Cola Company. Many countries are considering measures to reduce plastic bottle consumption. Proposals from Britain include a deposit return plan and the improvement of free drinking water supply in major cities, including London.

About 10 million tons of plastic disappear in the ocean each year. In 2010, scientists from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis and the University of Georgia estimated then that this figure would be 8 million tonnes and it is projected to increase to 9.1 million tonnes by 2015. The same study, published in the journal Science in 2015, investigated the handling of marine plastic waste in 192 coastal countries, showing that Asian countries make up 13 of the 20 countries that discharge the largest plastic wastes.