Save our seas!

Plastic

One of the main causes of depopulation in marine life

What is plastic?

A synthetic material made from a wide range of organic polymers such as polyethylene, PVC, nylon, etc., that can be moulded into shape while soft, and then set into a solid or slightly bendy/soft form.

How is it made?

Plastic pellets are fed from a hopper into an extruder. Plastics are made from organic products. The materials used in the production of plastics are natural products such as cellulose, coal, natural gas, salt and crude oil. Crude oil is a complex mixture of thousands of compounds.

How much do we use?

10 tons of plastic fragments—like grocery bags, straws and soda bottles—are carried into the Pacific Ocean every day.

• Over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century.
• 50 percent of the plastic we use, we use just once and throw away.
• Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the earth four times.
• We currently recover only five percent of the plastics we produce
• A average person throws away 8kg of plastic that could have been recycled or reused
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  • Americans use 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour! Most of them are thrown away!
  • Recycling plastic saves twice as much energy as burning it in an incinerator.
  • Americans throw away 25,000,000,000 Styrofoam coffee cups every year.
  • Over 1,600 businesses are involved in recycling post-consumer plastics.
  • PET plastic can be recycled into: clothing, fiberfill for sleeping bags, toys, stuffed animals, rulers and more.
  • Only around 27% of plastic bottles are recycled.
  • Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures a year! Ever heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It's twice the size of Texas and is floating somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii. It's also 80 percent plastic, and weighs in at 3.5 million tons.
  • When the small particles from photodegraded plastic bags get into the water, they are ingested by filter feeding marine animals. Biotoxins like PCBs that are in the particles are then passed up the food chain, including up to humans.

How does it affect wildlife?

The real impact of plastic bag litter is felt on wildlife both in the marine environment and in rural areas.

.Animals mistake the plastic for food and then swallow it down. When turtles swallow it it stays in

their stomach, then when they eat fish the 2 gases mix and the turtle floats helplessly to the

surface . Here they are easy prey for sharks and other large fish.

Tens of thousands of whales, birds, seals and turtles are killed every year from plastic bag litter in the marine environment as they often mistake plastic bags for food such as jellyfish.

Plastic bags, once ingested, cannot be digested or passed by an animal so it stays in the gut.

Plastic in an animal’s gut can prevent food digestion and can lead to a very slow and painful death.

As plastic bags can take up to 1,000 years to break down, once an animal dies and decays after ingesting plastic, the plastic is then freed back into the marine environment to carry on killing other wildlife.

We use over 300 million tonnes of new plastic every year.  Half of this we use just once and usually for less than 12 minutes.  8 million tonnes of plastic waste ends up in the ocean every year.

Animals and marine life suffer directly from plastic pollution. Birds feed on plastic, and an increasing number starve when their stomachs are full of plastic waste. 97.5% of Laysan Albatross chicks have plastic pieces in their stomachs.

Animal stories

Carrying on

In August 2000, an eight metre Bryde's whale died soon after becoming stranded on a Cairns beach. An autopsy found that the whale's stomach was tightly packed with 6 m2 of plastic, including many plastic check-out bags. Such obstructions in animals can cause severe pain, distress and death.

Bryde's whales, like many other types of whales, feed by swallowing large amounts of water. If the Bryde's whale had died at sea, it would have decayed, releasing the plastic to kill other marine life for hundreds of years to come.

'Lucky' the platypus rescued

In May 2003, a Platypus was rescued from the Don River, Tasmania, after a plastic bag became wrapped around its body, cutting deep into its skin.

The platypus overcame the species' usual shyness to approach a person for help.

After seeking medical advice and giving the platypus time to recover it seemed to be okay and set free. On seeing its injuries, its rescuer called it 'Lucky.'

'Pete' the pelican died after swallowing 17 plastic bags

In 1998, a pelican was found dead in Kiama after eating 17 plastic bags.

The pelican probably thought the plastic bags were food. The pelican was preserved and named Pete. Since then he has been standing in front of a sign at Fitzroy Falls that informs visitors of how he died and the problems of plastic bags and ocean pollution.

Other wildlife affected by plastic bags

Discovered in agony, a calf that was recently put down in Mudgee NSW, was found to have eaten 8 plastic bags.

Birds get caught up in them too. Unable to fly they die of starvation.

Turtles have also been rescued with plastic bags lodged in their throat – and part of the bag hanging out of their mouth. (left)

What happens to it after it has been used?

Most of us do not think much about recycling. We might clean bottles and jars, crush cartons and break down boxes. We might sort these items into their designated bins or bags, but once we lose sight of the recyclables, the rest of the process is an abstraction. Recycling makes us feel good, but few of us know what actually happens to a plastic bottle after we drop it into a bin.

What happens is the bottle enters an elaborate global system within which its plastic is sold, shipped, melted, resold, and shipped again—sometimes zigzagging the globe before becoming a carpet, clothing, or repeating life as a bottle. This process is possible because plastic is a stubborn substance, which resists decomposition. With a presumed lifespan of over 500 years, it’s safe to say that every plastic bottle we have used exists somewhere on this planet, in some form or another.