Where does trash go?

Almost everywhere you look outside there is a chance that you’re going to see liter of some kind on the ground or in a tree. People throw cigarette butts, cups, old lighters, and plastic bags on the ground, which are then eaten by unsuspecting animals or carried off into our water stream where they then gather in the pacific trash vortex. The pacific trash vortex is a vast amount of plastic and other trash that gathered off the shore of California. According to Green Peace, “The very thing that makes plastic items useful to consumers, their durability and stability, also makes them a problem in marine environments. Around 100 million tons of plastic are produced each year of which about 10 percent ends up in the sea. About 20 percent of this is from ships and platforms, 80 percent from land. The North Pacific sub-tropical gyre covers a large area of the Pacific in which the water circulates clockwise in a slow spiral. Winds are light. The currents tend to force any floating material into the low energy central area of the gyre. There are few islands on which the floating material can beach. So it stays there in the gyre, in astounding quantities estimated at six kilos of plastic for every kilo of naturally occurring plankton.” Plankton is an animal that converts carbon dioxide into carbon and store it in there body. Plankton is also consumed by all kinds of marine life, but it is now being mistaken with plastic. Marine life eats the plastic thinking it is plankton and then gets sick because there body can not digest the infected plastic. The fish eats the diseased plastic and gets sick, the seal eats that fish and gets sick, a polar bear eats that seal and ends up on the endangered spices list.Even if you don’t live by the ocean, trash can be having a negative impact on your natural environment. Trash is a breading ground for disease causing insects and rodents to become diseased. Open containers such as paper cups or beverage cans, hold rainwater, providing breeding locations for mosquitoes which have been known to cause diseases such as West Nile Virus and Malaria. Uncollected litter can attract more, flow into streams, storm water drainage systems, bays and rivers. Animals can get tangled or poisoned by the litter in there habitat. Cigarette butts and lighters have been found in the stomachs on birds, whales and fish who mistook them for food. There is a lot of trash already on the ground, get together with a group of friends and pick some of that trash up.