Plastic pollution in the oceans is a growing problem. Global plastic production has increased from 5 million tons to over 250 million tons currently, with an estimated 3 metric tons entering the oceans every 15 seconds. Plastics do not biodegrade quickly and can take hundreds of years to break down, harming wildlife that ingest or become entangled in plastic debris. Proposed solutions include reducing single-use plastic consumption, reusing materials more than once when possible, recycling plastics and other materials, and launching large-scale ocean cleaning systems to remove existing plastic waste from the ocean.

1. PLASTIC POLLUTION IN
OCEAN
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2. Overview
•Introduction on plastics
•Magnitude of the plastics
•Sources
•Impacts
•Solutions/mitigation
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3. What is plastic?
•Plastics are synthetic material
•Usually made from oil or natural gas
•Plastics are made by linking thousands of
monomers(like bisphenol-A (BPA) and vinyl chloride, are
harmful and toxic).
•The main types are :
• Polyethylene(bottles,jars,bags,cups)
• Polystyrene(cups,pellets)
• Polypropylene(bottlecaps,drinkingstraws)
• PVC(shoes,pipes,furniture)World Oceans Day 2015 3

4. Magnitude of problem increasing
• Rapid and substantial increase in anthropogenic debris on the ocean surface
and beaches over recent decades.
• Global plastic production has increased from 5million tons to over 250
million tons current.
• Because
• Inexpensive
• Light weight
• Strong
• Durable
• Easy to use
• About 3 metric tones of plastic is estimated to be entering the
oceans every 15sec. World Oceans Day 2015 4

5. We use over 1 million plastic
bags every minute
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6. How long can plastic take to degrade?
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7. Main sources
•Approximately 80% comes from land-based
sources:
• Litter(pedestrians, motorists, beach visitors)
• Industrial discharges(pellets and powders)
• Garbage management(containers, trucks, landfills)
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8. •Approximately 20% comes from ocean-based
sources:
• Commercial fishing vessels
• Cargo ships (discharge of containers and garbage)
• Pleasure cruise ships
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9. Problems for people
•Looks dirty
•Decreases tourism value
•Pollutes swimming areas
•Can cause harm & injury to
people
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10. Wildlife issues
• Entanglement
• Ingestion
• Chemicals
• Invasive species
• Coral reefs can be harmed
• Ghost fishing
•Over 1 000 000 sea birds, 100 000 marine mammals
and 1000s of turtles are killed by plastic every year.
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11. Entanglement
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12. Impacts of Fishing Gear
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13. Ingestion
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14. April 2010-Puget Sound-California Grey Whale Stomach
contents: pants and golf ball, more than 20 plastic bags, small
towels, duct tape and surgical gloves
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15. Spread of invasive species
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16. Solutions
•Reduce
•The best thing we can do is use less plastic! If we don’t use
it, there’s no way it can end up in our oceans.
•No excuse for single use
•Take your own bag to the supermarket
•Grow your own vegetables & fruit
•Say no to straws
•Use reusable cloth diapers instead of plastic one
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17. Reuse
•Try to use items more than once.
•Bottles drinking water
•Bottles eco bricks
•Bottles plant holders
•Plastic boxes (e.g. ice cream containers) as lunch boxes
•Be creative & use your imagination
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18. Recycle
• rubbish new useful products.
• Paper, plastics, glass, metal and textiles can all be recycled.
•Others
• Put in the dustbin
• Compost
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20. The massive ocean cleaning system is planned
to be launched in 2016.
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21. World Oceans Day 2015 21
SAVE
OCEANS
&
MARINE
LIFE

22. World Oceans Day 2015 22

23. •Reference:
WWW.oceanambassadors.org
Clean Water Action California
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