Geography

Can you think of the top ten environmental issues facing our planet today?

 

  • Fossil Fuels

  • Greenhouse Gases             

  • Throwing litter on the streets

  • Deforestation             

  • Water Scarcity              

  • Climate Change        

  • Loss of ice in the Arctic         

  • Global warming             

  • Flooding

  • Mining

  • Lack of biodiversity

  • Wild Fires/Forest Fires

  • Desertification

  • Radioactive waste management

  • Disappearance of bees

  • Sea pollution

 

                 

Plastic ends up in…

  1. It ends up in landfills. It takes up lots of space

  2. The landfill mixes with the rain coming from above and the plastic absolves the water and some of the are highly toxic which makes a stew called leachate.

  3. It can take up to 1000 years to decompose

  4. It can ends up in the Great pacific Garbage pack

  5. There are 5 giant gyres of garbage around the world

  6. It tangles birds and turtles think plastic looks like food and when they eat it, it makes them full when they are really not so they starve to death

  7. Micro-plastics will be stuck in the ocean forever

  8. It gets recycled

  9. It gets taken to a recycling plant and it get pressed and the blocks are shredded, washed and melted to form new plastics

 

 

Plastic is

 

9% are recycled

12% are burnt

79% are accumulated

 

If this continues, 12 billion tonnes roughly will be in landfills or the natural environment by 2050.

 

Newspaper takes 6 weeks to disintegrate

Plywood take 1-3 years to disintegrate

A fishing line takes 600 years to disintegrate

 

 

 

 

Microplastic usually end up in oceans across the world. This can lead to animals eating these as it is very common for turtles to eat these pieces thinking it as food. You can tell this because 1000 turtles die due to plastic every year as well as in a new study, microplastics were found in the gut of every sea turtle. This can lead to multiple negative outcomes like poor health, disability to move and even starve to death. This shows that microplastics are not good for turtles or any marine life.

 

 

The Great Pacific Garbage pack is found in the Pacific ocean, mostly near Japan and the USA.