Plasticized

Okay, so for this extra credit assignment I choose to watch the documentary Plasticized. This documentary, just like the last, was an amazing, eye-opening, movie. It began with a man’s curiosity of plastic pollution, which eventually evolved to a journey apart of the 5 Gyres Institute to travel through the South Atlantic gyres. This expedition was the first of two things, it was the first time the producer went to open sea, and the first time they filmed a documentary of plastic pollution.

The central idea of this documentary almost centered around, or at least carried the theme of, the evil fact that people throw away an item in one minute that lasts forever. During the film I learned how the plastic that is polluted into our environment accumulates to the gyres –which are natural earth systems- and then biomagnifies up the food chain. As we learned in class, the bio magnification can take place in small fish, than to larger fish, and then, yes you know it, to humans. But, lets kick it back a notch for a second, its not just the plastic alone that bio accumulates, instead, pollutants attract to plastic and when near, they attach to one another. When this plastic is attached to even more pollution (i.e. chemicals), it disrupts fish’ endocrine systems. Cruel right?

So, on this journey to the gyre, they trolled to collect plastic, and the occasional fish that they would examine. The crew on the ship was SO driven to collect floating plastic, it was insane, at one point one of the scientist even jumped in the water to collect a piece of floating plastic. Just watching them do some of the troll work was even exhausting; at some points it’s so torturous for them, but yet so rewarding in the end. In fact, for one week of the expedition the storms were so rough that the ship began to leak, but when they awoke, the water was calm, for the first time.

Lets now examine the trolling, they drag this small net, which skims across the ocean surface, and it’s about a foot long. This, as I mentioned earlier, collects plastic that floats on the open ocean. Now this small amount that they troll is less than the edge of a razor blade compared to a football field, sounds small right? That goes to show just how large the ocean is, and why we should work towards controlling and preventing this large wasteful plastic use. But, if you added up all the tablespoons of troll they collect, it would add to tens of thousands of tons of trash floating in the gyres alone.

This leaves humans with one question; do we do something about this? Or do we just merely walk away? It seems easy to agree that walking away and ignoring the situation is nothing more than attributing to the great floating patch of trash in the ocean, and all of the other bio magnifying plastic that kills animal’s worldwide. From this documentary I really did learn how bad plastic use is, and where most of the plastic really does go, even sometimes after recycling. It was most definitely a life changing movie, so if you’re reading this…. What are you waiting for? Go check it out!

Here are some facts displayed at the end of the documentary:

• In 2010 alone it was estimated that over 300 million tons of new plastics were produced around the world.
• Only 13.3% of plastics were recycled in 2008, less than 1% of plastic bags are recycled each year.
• The cost to recycle 1 ton of plastic bags is $4,000, the product created is values at $32.

Unbelievable right?