A Blog post on Commonly Found Plastics in the Ocean:
- Cigarette butts- I found it surprising that you can find these are Commonly Found Plastics in the Ocean , but because all the water systems eventually interconnect and go in the sea means that that cigarette butts often find their way into the sea even if they haven’t been left on the beach or by the sea.
- Micro-fibers – these tiny pieces of plastic can come from plastic breaking down, fishing nets, beads and fibres that come off clothes in the washing machine, they can often absorb harmful chemicals and then release them into the sea, they are incredibly small and fish often end up ingesting them, which means that when you eat a fish it could have plastic in it.
- Plastic food packets- until recently cigarette butts were the most common item to be found on beaches but in 2020 they were overtaken by plastic food packets. 32.5 million pieces of plastic were collected by the ocean conservancy clean ups and there were 7 million food wrappers.
- Bottle caps- over the last 20 years more than 20 million bottle caps have been found during beach clean ups, however it is unknown how many bottle caps actually enter the ocean. When plastic bottles enter the ocean the lids can detach so although the amount is unknown it would certainly be more than are on the beaches.
- Plastic bags- 300 million plastic bags end up in the sea each year, most of which end up on garbage patches, massive groups of plastic which can be 1.6 million kilometres long, (The great pacific garbage patch). Sea animals can digest these when they break down or get injured from getting caught in them.
I was surprised when I found out about some of these, and shocked by some of the figures, I hope you found this interesting.
This Post Written by “O” aged 14.