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extremely small pieces of plastic debris in the environment resulting from the disposal and breakdown of consumer products and industrial waste.

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microplastics are bad because when plastic goes into the ocean then it becomes super tiny and fish eat that and we eat the fish and the plastic ends up in our stomach

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They're produced from crude oil which releases greenhouses gases into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming and that air is damaging the animals.

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Link for why plastic water bottles are bad

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A million bottles a minute: world's plastic binge 'as dangerous as climate change'

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Exclusive: Annual consumption of plastic bottles is set to top half a trillion by 2021, far outstripping recycling efforts and jeopardising oceans, coastlines and other environments

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Let me tell you why that plastic bottles are bad.#1. about 1500 plastic bottles that are consumed every second

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You shouldn't rely on recycling plastic because sometimes the wind will blow away the piece of plastic and will lead to the ocean

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What happens to bottles that end up in the water?

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What happens to bottles that end up in the water?

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It has been strongly linked to a host of health problems including certain types of cancer, neurological difficulties, and defects in newborn babies – to name a few examples.

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What happens when micrplastics get in the ocean?

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What happens when micrplastics get in the ocean?

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They break down into smaller and smaller pieces over time. These small plastic pieces, known as microplastics, often get into the watershed (lakes, rivers, streams) along with water bottle caps.

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We can help by using less plastic, for example plastic water bottles we use them a lot like at the cafeteria

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Why Are Microplastics dangerous?

Plastics are indigestible and non-biodegradable and once produced, one cannot get rid of them. The majority of the world’s plastics end up in the garbage, rivers, and eventually in lakes and oceans. Large plastics float across oceans and sometimes collect together to form garbage patches such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Microplastics, on the other hand, exist on beaches and deeper waters. Large plastics cause physical damage to marine animals and can result in death. However, the biggest problems are microplastic. They are mistaken for food by marine animals and ingested. They block the digestive system of animals and result in low levels of oxygen and consequently result in reduced energy levels. Some plastics are so tiny that they embed in the animal tissues. They are passed across the food chain, and some find their way to humans. Microplastics find their way to humans through ingestion or respiration. Today, the sources of microplastics are so essential to humans that we cannot live without them. The best alternative to controlling microplastic remains proper handling of plastic and thorough treatment of wastewater.

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Marine animals are in the ocean and finding plastic, thinking it´s food. And once they consume it, they will not feel hungry. The plastic cannot be digested and will stay in their stomach. They wont be hungry and you might be wondering. What is so bad about that?

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You must have observed that grocery shops these days do not use plastic bags. They hand out all your things in either paper bags or cloth bags. So what happened to the plastic bags that we used? There is a reason plastic is slowly disappearing. In fact, it is a conscious effort by everyone as plastic is very harmful for our environment. Of course, now you would want to know why.
Whenever we throw something like paper, food peels, leaves etc there are small tiny creatures in nature – the bacteria – who eat these things up or turn them into useful products that nature loves.  These things are called ‘Biodegradable’.
‘Non-Biodegradable‘ things, on the other hand, like glass, steel and plastic – can not be turned into useful, nature friendly products. The bacteria just can’t eat them up or break them up.
Plastic is harmful because it is ‘Non-Biodegradable’. When thrown on land it makes the soil less fertile. When thrown in water it chokes our ponds, rivers and oceans and harms the sea life. If animals eat plastic, it gets stuck in their tummy and makes them sick. Why? because the bacteria in their stomach cannot break the plastic up into smaller pieces.
Factories that make plastic have to make tons of them every day because people ask for plastic bags – in shopping malls, grocery stores, everywhere. We can help these factories by giving back the unused plastic bags in our house – this is called “Recycling”. Recycling helps factories make fresh plastic by using the old ones. We can also help by using  cloth bags for shopping instead of plastic bags. Imagine if all of us stop asking for plastic bags the factories will have no reason to make them – they can then start making beautiful cloth bags.
Plastic never goes away.

Plastic is a material made to last forever, yet 33 percent of all plastic - water bottles, bags and straws - are used just once and thrown away. Plastic cannot biodegrade; it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces.
Disposed plastic materials can remain in the environment for up to 2,000 years and longer.

Plastic affects human health.
Toxic chemicals leach out of plastic and are found in the blood and tissue of nearly all of us. Exposure to them is linked to cancers, birth defects, impaired immunity, endocrine disruption and other ailments.
Two broad classes of plastic-related chemicals are of critical concern for human health—bisphenol-A or BPA, and additives used in the synthesis of plastics, which are known as phthalates.

Plastic spoils our groundwater.
There are thousands of landfills in the United States. Buried beneath each one of them, toxic chemicals from plastics drain out and seep into groundwater, flowing downstream into lakes and rivers.
There are long-term risks of contamination of soils and groundwater by some additives and breakdown by-products in plastics, which can become persistent organic pollutants.
Plastic attracts other pollutants.
Chemicals in plastic which give them their rigidity or flexibility (flame retardants, bisphenols, phthalates and other harmful chemicals) are oily poisons that repel water and stick to petroleum-based objects like plastic debris.  So, the toxic chemicals that leach out of plastics can accumulate on other plastics.  This is a serious concern with increasing amounts of plastic debris accumulating in the world's oceans.
Fish, exposed to a mixture of polyethylene with chemical pollutants absorbed from the marine environment, bioaccumulate these chemical pollutants and suffer liver toxicity and pathology.

Plastic threatens wildlife.
Wildlife become entangled in plastic, they eat it or mistake it for food and feed it to their young, and it is found littered in even extremely remote areas of the Earth.  In our oceans alone, plastic debris outweighs zooplankton by a ratio of 36-to-1.
Over 260 species, including invertebrates, turtles, fish, seabirds and mammals, have been reported to ingest or become entangled in plastic debris, resulting in impaired movement and feeding, reduced reproductive output, lacerations, ulcers and death.
Plastic piles up in the environment.
Americans discard more than 30 million tons of plastic a year. Only 8 percent gets recycled. The rest ends up in landfills, is burned or becomes litter.
More than 5 trillion plastic pieces weighing over 250,000 tons afloat at sea.
Plastic poisons our food chain.
Even plankton, the tiniest creatures in our oceans, are eating microplastics and absorbing their hazardous chemicals.  The tiny, broken down pieces of plastic are displacing the algae needed to sustain larger sea life who feed on them.
Contaminated plastics when ingested by marine species present a credible route by which the POPs can enter the marine food web.
Plastic costs billions to abate.
Everything suffers: tourism, recreation, business, the health of humans, animals, fish and birds—because of plastic pollution. The financial damage continuously being inflicted is inestimable.

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Plastics are derived from materials found in nature, such as natural gas, oil, coal, minerals and plants. The very first plastics were made by nature—did you know that rubber from a rubber tree is actually a plastic?

Interest in making plastics arose in the 1800s to replace scarce materials such as ivory and tortoise shell. The first synthetic plastics were derived from cellulose, a substance found in plants and trees. Cellulose was heated with chemicals and resulted in a new material that was extremely durable.

The raw materials for today’s plastics come from many places (some even use salt!), but most plastics can be made from the hydrocarbons that are readily available in natural gas, oil and coal.

https://www.plasticsmakeitpossible.com/about-plastics/types-of-plastics/what-are-plastics/

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micro plastics come from every where. From shampoos and trash we throw. There are about 300,000 plastic beads in a single bottle of shampoo. The trash we throw gets crushed up and become microplastics that end up in our oceans.

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What Are Microplastics And How Are They Harming Our Oceans? Plastic Pollution - Behind the News

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Micro plastics are little pieces of plastic. Micro plastics are made when products made of plastic are burned down, for example plastic bags or water bottles.

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Did you know Americans use more than 380 billion plastic bags and wraps each year.

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Plastic Water bottles are bad

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Marine animals are finding plastic. They consume more and more until they get full. And your wondering, why is that bad? Well, first plastic cannot be digested. As the animal will think its full, its really starving. The animal who consumes the plastic will get no nutrition.

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8 million metric tons of plastic end up in our oceans. It's equivalent to five grocery bags filled with plastic for every foot of coastline in the world. 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags. each year are consumed.

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Link about how Plastic gets into the ocean

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A plan to end plastic pollution in Aotearoa.

Around the world, people and governments are taking action. They're taking bold actions to end the flow of single-use plastic pollution. Powerful corporations want to...

Take Action

We know our oceans and coastlines are choking on plastic. We've all seen plastic bottles, food wrappers and plastic bags polluting beaches, and been horrified by the stories of marine creatures like seabirds and whales starving when their stomachs become packed full of plastic.

Scientists have shown that up to 12 million tonnes of plastic is entering our oceans every year - that's a rubbish truck full every minute. Single-use plastic packaging for food and drink is a particularly common part of the problem.

But how does plastic actually get into our oceans?

While about a fifth of marine litter is made up of fishing gear and other materials lost at sea by accident, industrial losses, or illegal dumping, we know that roughly 80% of litter in the seas comes from land.
Our rubbish
The sheer amount of plastic that has been generated in the past 60 years is mind boggling. New research shows that we've produced plastic as heavy as 1 billion elephants since the 1950s. Even more staggering is the amount that has rapidly become waste. Just 9% of this plastic has been recycled. That means the majority of plastic waste has simply been dumped in landfills or burned.

However, when plastic waste is collected and transported to landfill sites, it can be at risk of escaping into the environment. Even when it's in landfills, plastic is at risk of blowing away and ending up in rivers or oceans.

Even more of a risk is plastic litter. That's plastic that either that isn't collected where good waste managements systems are lacking, or plastic that is simply dropped or left behind on streets or in the environment. These plastic items can be carried by wind and rain into our drainage networks or rivers that then flow into the sea. Major rivers around the world carry an estimated 1.15-2.41 million tons of plastic into the sea every year - that's up to 100,000 rubbish trucks.

Holidaymakers visiting beaches and leaving behind their bottles, food packaging and cigarette butts on the sand directly contribute to plastic getting into the ocean.

Ironically, the tourism industry that has enabled more people to visit beautiful beaches is suffering as the growing problem of plastic pollution is turning visitors off destinations where the problem is most visible.
Products that go down the drain
Many people were horrified to discover that tiny pieces of plastic known as microbeads have been added to all sorts of personal care and cosmetic products that are washed directly down the drain - from face scrubs to shower gels to toothpaste. As many of these microbeads are too small to be filtered out by wastewater plants, these plastic pieces are remaining in water that may end up flowing into the ocean.

That public outrage at these microbeads polluting our oceans combined with concerted campaigning has led to governments across the world banning products from containing microbeads, including the UK, US and Canada.

But plastic in cotton buds, facewipes or sanitary products that are flushed down the loo, and even plastic fibres in clothing that shed in the washing machines still pose a risk for plastic entering the ocean.
Industrial leakage
Finally, lax standards in industrial processes are responsible for some plastic getting into the environment, either when products containing plastic aren't disposed of properly, or escaping during the production and or transporting of products. For example, thousands of the tiny plastic pellets used to make plastic products, known as nurdles or mermaid's tears, are washed up on UK shorelines every year, polluting nearly three quarters of UK beaches at a count in February this year.

Once plastic is in our oceans, it flows on ocean currents all across the world - so even uninhabited islands in the Pacific and the Arctic are becoming dumping grounds for plastic.

That's why we have to tackle the problem at source. To end ocean plastics we need corporates to reduce the amount of single-use plastic they are selling, to cut down on the plastic that is thrown away in the first place. We also need governments to improve waste management systems and boost the re-use of plastic through initiatives that boost resource efficiency and a circular economy. We need to close the loop on plastic, ensuring it stops escaping into our environment and flowing into the oceans. Marine life simply cannot stomach any more plastic.

This blog post was originally published by Greenpeace UK. But there's action you can take here in New Zealand, too. We're calling on the NZ Government to ban single-use plastic bags. Sign the petition!

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We know our oceans and coastlines are choking on plastic. We've all seen plastic bottles, food wrappers and plastic bags polluting beaches, and been horrified by the stories of marine creatures like seabirds and whales starving when their stomachs become packed full of plastic.

Scientists have shown that up to 12 million tonnes of plastic is entering our oceans every year - that's a rubbish truck full every minute. Single-use plastic packaging for food and drink is a particularly common part of the problem.

But how does plastic actually get into our oceans?

While about a fifth of marine litter is made up of fishing gear and other materials lost at sea by accident, industrial losses, or illegal dumping, we know that roughly 80% of litter in the seas comes from land.
Our rubbish
The sheer amount of plastic that has been generated in the past 60 years is mind boggling. New research shows that we've produced plastic as heavy as 1 billion elephants since the 1950s. Even more staggering is the amount that has rapidly become waste. Just 9% of this plastic has been recycled. That means the majority of plastic waste has simply been dumped in landfills or burned.

However, when plastic waste is collected and transported to landfill sites, it can be at risk of escaping into the environment. Even when it's in landfills, plastic is at risk of blowing away and ending up in rivers or oceans.

Even more of a risk is plastic litter. That's plastic that either that isn't collected where good waste managements systems are lacking, or plastic that is simply dropped or left behind on streets or in the environment. These plastic items can be carried by wind and rain into our drainage networks or rivers that then flow into the sea. Major rivers around the world carry an estimated 1.15-2.41 million tons of plastic into the sea every year - that's up to 100,000 rubbish trucks.

Holidaymakers visiting beaches and leaving behind their bottles, food packaging and cigarette butts on the sand directly contribute to plastic getting into the ocean.

Ironically, the tourism industry that has enabled more people to visit beautiful beaches is suffering as the growing problem of plastic pollution is turning visitors off destinations where the problem is most visible.
Products that go down the drain
Many people were horrified to discover that tiny pieces of plastic known as microbeads have been added to all sorts of personal care and cosmetic products that are washed directly down the drain - from face scrubs to shower gels to toothpaste. As many of these microbeads are too small to be filtered out by wastewater plants, these plastic pieces are remaining in water that may end up flowing into the ocean.

That public outrage at these microbeads polluting our oceans combined with concerted campaigning has led to governments across the world banning products from containing microbeads, including the UK, US and Canada.

But plastic in cotton buds, facewipes or sanitary products that are flushed down the loo, and even plastic fibres in clothing that shed in the washing machines still pose a risk for plastic entering the ocean.
Industrial leakage
Finally, lax standards in industrial processes are responsible for some plastic getting into the environment, either when products containing plastic aren't disposed of properly, or escaping during the production and or transporting of products. For example, thousands of the tiny plastic pellets used to make plastic products, known as nurdles or mermaid's tears, are washed up on UK shorelines every year, polluting nearly three quarters of UK beaches at a count in February this year.

Once plastic is in our oceans, it flows on ocean currents all across the world - so even uninhabited islands in the Pacific and the Arctic are becoming dumping grounds for plastic.

That's why we have to tackle the problem at source. To end ocean plastics we need corporates to reduce the amount of single-use plastic they are selling, to cut down on the plastic that is thrown away in the first place. We also need governments to improve waste management systems and boost the re-use of plastic through initiatives that boost resource efficiency and a circular economy. We need to close the loop on plastic, ensuring it stops escaping into our environment and flowing into the oceans. Marine life simply cannot stomach any more plastic.

This blog post was originally published by Greenpeace UK. But there's action you can take here in New Zealand, too. We're calling on the NZ Government to ban single-use plastic bags. Sign the petition!

Actor Lucy Lawless has laid down a trans-Tasman challenge from on board the Rainbow Warrior, calling on Australians to help protect New Zealand's whales. Lawless is currently on board the...

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How does plastic end up in the ocean? - Greenpeace New Zealand

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We know our oceans and coastlines are choking on plastic. We've all seen plastic bottles, food wrappers and plastic bags polluting beaches, and been horrified by the stories of marine creatures like seabirds and whales starving when their stomachs become packed full of plastic.

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It gets eaten by animals