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Asked by anatonijuan to Anais, katy, Lauren, Richard, Stuart on 11 Mar 2016.
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Richard Friend answered on 11 Mar 2016:
No, I don’t think so! This is based on some really good news – despite the fact that plastics were only invented in the 20th century, some organisms have already been discovered in nature that consume plastics. Samples have been taken from the Pacific gyre, where a lot of floating plastic ends up, and the samples are all pitted, showing evidence of consumption. I think this also means that plastic parts won’t last as long in the future though.
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Lauren Laing answered on 11 Mar 2016:
I don’t think so; scientists are constantly developing new kinds of plastics which are biodegradable, and ways in which we can reuse and break down plastics. The common mealworm has been shown to safely biodegrade various types of plastic, bacteria have also been discovered that are able to digest polyethylene! I think as manufacturing and recycling technologies improve we will be able to manage our plastic waste better, I don’t think we have a choice but to improve.
But the problem still lies with the plastic already out there in the oceans, rivers and soils. Another thing to remember, is as one plastic bottle floats in the ocean, it is gradually damaged by UV light, and eventually one plastics bottle can become thousands of micro plastic pieces. Small plastics can be ingested by organisms and cause them harm, possibly making it harder from small organisms to work out what is food and what is plastic! Larger plastics are found lodged in the stomachs of ocean mammals and sharks. Plastics have been found at many levels of the food chain, from tiny sardines to big cod! Chemicals leeched from plastics have been shown to negatively affect fish, examples include Bisphenol A (BPA), which has been shown to impact on reproduction in fish.
I’m not sure we will end up in a position where there will be more plastic in the sea than fish, but I do think as technologies improve and allow us to make better more environmentally friendly materials, we cannot lose sight of the plastics already out there in the environment, which in some cases can take anything in the region of 450 – 1000 years to completely degrade.
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Anais Kahve answered on 11 Mar 2016:
I also don’t think so. This is because the people are taking this problem very seriously and there are many clean-up operations in place that are trying to remove the plastic (and other wastes) from our seas.
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Stuart Atkinson answered on 14 Mar 2016:
No I don’t think so either. There are a lot of fish in the oceans and the oceans are very deep. The deepest part of the ocean, Challenger Deep in the Pacific, is deeper than Mount Everest is tall (!) so there’s a lot of volume for fish to live in, but the plastic can only float at the surface.
Having said that, plastic in the oceans is a serious problem.
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