Plastic Paradise Response I have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch once or twice but I don’t think I full realized how bad the problem was until I saw Plastic Paradise. When I heard of the “garbage island” I honestly thought it was an island of garbage you can go out onto and potentially stand on. The fact that you can’t really see the island because it’s all spread out and a few inches below the surface was an astonishing fact! The way the oceans current moves that so no matter where the trash starts out in eventually it’ll arrive together in the island section by Midway is also very interesting. It would be pretty cool if the could study the way the currents moved so that way they can have ships in certain sections of the ocean that just pick up the trash there so it doesn’t keep traveling around the Pacific risking lives then finally coming together near Midway. I heard in high school science classes about how the plastic epidemic was affecting animals in the ocean as well as birds but the trash and plastic on Midway is threatening about 2 million albatross. When they toured the island they saw dead/dying birds from plastic that got caught up in their throats or stomachs which eventually killed them, but the man cut open the bird and they found pen lid and fishing line, pretty much they found a bunch of items that do not belong in the ocean and should have never got to those birds. Along with the birds the Captain of one of the boats said he caught a small fish and when he gutted it found close to 80 small pieces of plastic inside of it. The longer the plastic sits in the water the smaller and older it gets which makes it make likely for little animals to eat since it’s small and can easily fit in their mouths. The plastic never goes away so this means if the birds are eating it/ bring to their young eventually if will kill them. Also this means if the fish are eating the plastic when us humans eat fish there are chances we are eating the same plastic they ate which could kill us like it has the fish. Every molecule of plastic ever made still exists somewhere on earth, which just proves how this is a huge issue considering we are producing more and more plastic everyday. The USA alone uses roughly 115 billon pounds of new plastic a year. That’s NEW plastic, that doesn’t even account for the plastic that has been recycled or the multiple uses one plastic item may get in your household. We use about 85 million plastic bottles every 3 minutes, which is just a crazy high number that could be reduced by reusable water bottles. During WWII the plastic industry boomed making about 85% of plastic production ever. This kind of shows you that plastic has been around for roughly 70 years, so that’s 70 years of plastic out there around earth, doing something or potentially killing animals. Another huge problem they are facing around midway is that fishing nets that are plastic are floating around the water and breaking off coral reef heads. That not only is the damaging the reefs but also is damaging living animal that live inside and around the reef. If we lost all the reefs in the world no one actually knows what would happen to earth but long story short is that we would all die, which is defiantly not in our best interest. Plastic is made out of oil and gases, which are not renewable sources. This means that someday there wont be any gas or oil to make the plastic bags, then the understanding the plastic problem and it will really be uncovered. Then people will realize the problem that we are now having with plastic and the problems it is giving the life in our oceans. So lets starts being sustainable now!