World Wednesday: Oceans and animals being trashed

As many people go on vacation during the summer, some people seem to lose respect for things around them.

Not only do people forget about humans around them, but people often forget the amount of animals they are surrounded by.

One example of disrespect is by leaving garbage on the beach.

And that trash that gets left behind or “forgotten about” blows into the ocean.

The estimated amount of garbage that ends up in the oceans every year is 19 billion pounds.

And according to Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineer, “this figure is on track to double by 2025 unless something is done, swiftly and at a global scale, to stem the tide of garbage.”

But not all of that trash floats. Some of it goes deep into the ocean and intertwines on the limbs of sea animals.

And when that happens, the animal harmed can become handicapped and not able to function properly like they once were, or even get killed by blockages.

But recently, groups of people from around the world have been creating ideas to clean up the plastic-ridden oceans.

One of the groups is called The Ocean Cleanup.

And their invention involves a floating barrier, held down by an anchor, that is meant to slowly push the plastic to the ocean’s shore.

But the anchor is not going to touch the sea bed. Instead, it will just be weighed enough to move with the flow of the current.

And once this garbage is brought to shore, the waste plastic will be recycled and turned into sellable products to help fund the project even further

But most importantly, aside from relying on science groups to clean up the ocean, citizens should realize that they can be apart of this environmental change too.

Cleaning up after themselves and even picking up any waste they see on the shore can be beneficial to the ocean and its inhabitants.