Do you know where your trash goes?
One of the main causes of harm to life under water is trash.
Most may think that the trash that gets thrown away completely ends up in landfills. In reality, trash lands everywhere especially in waterways and in the ocean.
Of the trash that ends up in water, several of the debris float forming patches of trash. While other debris sink. No matter where trash is going once it hits the water, it is causing harm to marine life.
Plastic waste is such a problematic pollutant because it is so long-lasting meaning plastic items can take hundreds of years to decompose.
Many marine organisms mistake plastic as food and consume it. This leads to the chemicals in plastic to get absorbed into the organism's tissues.
When larger organisms consume smaller organisms that have microplastics in their system, the chemicals get absorbed into the larger organism even though they didn't directly consume plastic.
Microplastic pollution migrates up the food chain and eventually becomes apart of the food that humans eat. At this point, trash comes full circle back and ends up harming humans along with marine life.
Read Our Other StoryBoards:
Learn more about how to change the world and our future
Spoiled Oceans (Part 1)
Or Do You Know Where Your Trash Goes
Our Behaviors (Part 4)
