Source of Plastic Pollution in Water Bodies
Years ago, our ancestors brought the trend of using plastics to ease our lives with single-use utensils and plastic bags to carry things around. However, even today, only a few people hire professional rubbish removal services like the one from the Ben and Jerry website. For other people, throwing away plastics is more convenient. We love to keep our homes clean but what about the environment we are destroying with such activities? It is time to give it a thought and mend our ways to keep the earth’s status as a healthy place to live. This blog includes the human activities that cause plastic pollution in water bodies and suffocate marine life to death. Here is how we are doing it.
Where Do the Plastics in Water Bodies Come From?
Around 12.7 million tonnes of plastic is dumped in the water bodies yearly. Environmentalists are warning us about this alarming rate of water pollution that will take the place of fish in the coming years. From household waste to industrial garbage, each of our activities produces thousands of tonnes of plastic each day. Here are the different sources that are generating waste to end up in the seas.
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Lifestyle Rubbish and Waste
Nowadays, it has become a fashion to take away the coffee in disposable cups while heading to the office. But do you know that those paper cups are non-recyclable due to their inner plastic lining? Well! You have heard it right. Similarly, single-use items are in great demand due to their convenient use. When you are not adopting appropriate trash removal methods and just participating in littering, these apparently harmless items make their way to the water bodies. Since they are not recyclable, they last for thousands of years and damage marine life balance.
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Plastic Pollution from Rivers
If your country is far away from the seas then how is your plastic waste going to reach it? The answer is Rivers. 80% of the plastic waste that we see in seas is flowing from the rivers. Single-use straws, plastic bottles, disposable utensils, food wrappers, etc are the major contributors to the plastic waste that flows from rivers to the seas. Hence, whatever kind of waste you are producing, and wherever you are throwing it, the waste generation negatively impacts both land and marine habitats. Therefore, only reducing, recycling, and reusing are the appropriate methods to deal with this junk.
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Plastic Pollution from Sewage System
Waste from the sewage system is worst because it not only contains the plastic from the earbuds or non-recyclable wipes and tissues but also, they are a major source of introducing microplastics to the Water bodies. While most of the trash in the sewage is treated and filtered before letting the water in the water bodies, the microplastics bypass this filtration due to their extremely small size which is less than 5 millimeters long. Thus, it harms aquatic life and when those microplastics become part of the food chain, human diseases are inevitable. In this way, you are risking your own life with your own hands.
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Plastic Pollution from the Fishing Industries
The fishing industries take out millions of fish from the water bodies, so humans can enjoy the delicious food at their tables. Things are fine if kept to this level. However, some of our irresponsible fishermen abandon their ghost gear like fishing nets in the seas which in turn entangles the aquatic animals and threatens their life.
Final Words
Our lifestyle, industries, and even daily activities are contributing to the generation of waste that makes its way to the water bodies and is hazardous to aquatic life. To save aquatic species and control the pollution of the seas, we have to upgrade ourselves to an eco-friendly lifestyle. Hire Big Ben for effective waste removal. Discouraging the use of non-recyclable items is the only way to bring the situation under control.
