Question

3 minutes speech about avoid plastics

Answer 1

WHAT if I told you that every single piece of plastic ever made still exists somewhere in the world today?

Would you still opt to eat your lunch with that takeaway knife and fork? Would you still ask to have your groceries double-bagged at the supermarket, knowing that it could end up in the belly of a bird, or in the gut of a whale?

Now, what if I told you that every second breath we take comes from the sea? Billions of people rely on our oceans for their food and for employment. In return, we suffocate it with mountains of garbage, toxic waste, pesticides, raw sewage and crude oil.

Plastic doesn’t disappear to that magical “away” place, nor does it break down, Whimn.com.au reports. Rather, it only breaks up and can float around for years, even decades, travelling tens of thousands of kilometres, before being ingested by an animal.

After that, there’s a good chance it will find its way to your own plate, with recent reports estimating that if you eat a lot of shellfish you might be consuming up to 11,000 fragments of the stuff a year. Still not convinced it’s finally time to opt out of single-use plastic?

HERE ARE THE COLD, HARD-TO-SWALLOW FACTS

• An estimated eight million metric tonnes of plastic waste enter the oceans each year. The problem is found in every known ecosystem and at every level of the food chain;

• More than 350 million tonnes of plastics are manufactured each year and that number continues to rise;

• Only 1% of what you see on the beach and on the surface is the plastic that exists in the world;

• If current marine pollution trends continue, the oceans will contain more plastic than fish by the year 2050;

• Leading environmentalists see the end of most sea life happening within the next 6—16 years;

• By 2025 all the coral reef ecosystems in the world will be gone;

• When wildlife ingest plastic, the brew of toxic chemicals can be transferred to the animal’s tissues. Fragments of plastics and textile fibres have been found in the guts of a huge variety of fish and shellfish that we eat.