DON BOSCO CHURCH VADODARA

Our oceans are being filled and killed by throwaway plastics. This short film of 4:30 seconds urges that we can together create a movement to reduce throwaway plastic at the source and save our oceans.

Our oceans sustain life and can feed billions of people a healthy meal every day. However, they are now filled with throwaway plastic. When we do the calculation of one truck garbage dumped in the sea every minute is equivalent to 17.6 billion pounds per year. Plastic is found everywhere in the ocean, either floating, mixing with salt water, or being settled on the ocean miles and miles deep.

Over hundreds of years, it breaks down into small pieces, but even those small pieces called micro-plastic are still plastic choking sea turtles. Scientists say that over 60% of whale and dolphin species are affected by plastic. Planktons, the base of ocean food chains eat this plastic and so do we.

Microplastic is found to be present in water, in our food, in our salt, our honey, and even in our beers, sometimes even in the air, we breathe. The companies are focusing on creating things that are used for once from the material which lasts long. As said in the film, we are facing a tsunami of throwaway plastic in our and the ocean's future.

It is estimated that the production would increase up to 4 times more between now and the middle of the century in all the history. As a solution, many of us would say that we should recycle plastic, but it is reported that all the plastic ever generated as of 2015 only 9% of plastic was recycled. Even when it is recycled a plastic degrades. Our plastic soda bottle maybe becomes a shampoo bottle or a mattress or in a best-case, it gets down cyclists and then becomes pollution which ruins our beaches and chokes our sea animals forever.

We should be given a choice of plastic-free choices. In fact, it is not hard to imagine. Some responsible companies are leading the way. There are throwaway plastic-free aisles in supermarkets. Restaurants are offering plastic-free services,plastic-free rooms in hotels and plastic-free bottle containers for soda and salsa water, etc.

Peru passed the law that keeps plastic out of national parks and beaches, Belize is getting rid of styrofoam and the European Union has mandated reductions for throwing away plastics throughout its 28 member countries. We can work together to create a movement to reduce throwaway plastic. We can help towns, schools, cities, and workplaces to establish zones free of throwaway plastic.

Let's stop plastic pollution from wrecking our beaches and our oceans and to have a healthy ocean that delights the sustained ease of the future for generations to come.