Jeeze, Julia!

I wrote the other day about how plastic doesn’t easily biodegrade (by easily, I mean it will take thousands of years for each plastic bag, straw, & abandoned toy to do so). And today my attention was brought toward another wordpress article on the same topic. Here you can find an article by the user “PlasticIsRubbish” which delves a little deeper into the explanation of degradation. It’s not boring scientist talk [sorry, Danielle ], but it is a better explanation than I provided last week, so if your ears were perked by that entry I think you should stop by this person’s article to read more on the topic. Pam, the writer of the blog, also mentions tons of ways to change your daily habits so as to be more sensitive to our Earth’s needs in the list of changes she has made. These include cornstarch based disposable cutlery (“disposable” plastic cutlery is probably  one of America’s biggest offenses on the green scale), reusable water bottles (another huge offense — even when they’re recycled), and toothbrushes!

She also started to talk a bit about how these tiny little fragments of plastic still effect us even though they’re so small that we can’t see them. We may think that it’s okay that these pieces are still plastic because at least they’re getting smaller so they won’t have as much of an effect…but sadly, it’s just the opposite. The smaller these pieces of plastic get, the more of a problem they become. This relates to our food chain. We humans are basically the top of the food chain. That means that pretty much everything else is food for us even if it’s indirectly. We eat certain animals, who eat smaller animals, who each eat even smaller animals, & it goes all the way down to the plankton & micro-organisms in the ocean and on land. Plastic is now breaking up into such tiny pieces that it is being consumed by these creatures as well as by us & all of the other animals in between. Basically, we eat plastic every day & don’t even know it. Now, most creatures’ bodies can’t break down the plastic in their digestive systems, so for the most part it just comes right back out the other end. However, if there is enough of it the plastic will instead work like a dam, clogging up our systems until we die. Humans kind of luck out here because we have such extensive medical opportunities, so if this were to happen to us we’d most likely operate & have the problem fixed, but I’ve personally seen it happen to an animal before (my childhood pet Fluffy the hamster died because he chewed through the plastic bars in his cage), & it is very much a heartbreaking occurrence. Now think about that happening to all of the creatures along the line to our dinner tables. This is the direction in which we are heading.

If micro-organisms die then the animals that eat them will starve, & so on, & so forth.

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