SOCIAL ISSUES For the sake of society. A Problem Bigger than Just Straws By: Cassidy Bessa Is there anything better than a day at the beach? Or how about seeing sea creatures in their natural habitat? It’s a beautiful sight, however our vision may be skewed upon seeing how our ocean is littered by plastic waste. The impending ban on plastic straws and single use utensils shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. We have all seen the photographs and heard the lectures about how the things we don’t give a second thought about, are ruining our planet. The World Economic Forum predicts that if we keep using plastic in the way we are, by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean. The uproar about plastic straws happened when a local researcher filmed a turtle with a straw in its nose. It was estimated that Americans use around 500 million straws a day. People all around the world are changing from plastic straws to metal straws and to biodegradable paper straws in order to help their own conscience. However, this is only the first step in stopping our problem of plastic consumption. According to Business Insider, in 2015, our plastic consumption was at 300 million metric tons. Awareness about the dangers of plastic bags have been drilled into our brains for the last few years, but that doesn’t stop most people for asking for a plastic bag at checkout. What we don’t know is that less than 9% of all plastic gets recycled, regardless of which bin we throw it in. Recycling just seems too expensive, and throwing it into the ocean is free. None of us think twice when we buy a beverage in a plastic bottle, we’re told that it will be recycled when in fact 79% of it will be thrown into landfills and 12% will be incinerated which releases harmful chemicals into our atmosphere.
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