MaureenReading response 1
The article is focused on telling the readers about how our trash, specifically plastics, is wrecking havoc on the ecosystem. The article mentions that the particles of plastic that have been found in fish and on shores have come from humans and that our neglect to do anything, or allowing it to happen, is causing harmful reactions to ourselves and to the ecosystem. We are poisoning ourselves essentially. While it’s interesting to see what is said about the breakdown of cups or plates and wrappers and bags to these tiny particles that are being swallowed by fish, or deposited onto the beaches, and back into our lives is unsettling. Even those that don’t eat any fish, there is something else that is eating the fish that they eat, or their feeding the garbage patch with the litter.
A guy in Peru could drop a bag of chips on the ground and that bag could make its way out to sea. Whenever that bag would reach one of these patches of garbage, it will get broken down and fish eat it up. The fish could end up swimming downriver, hooked and served as dinner to a man in New York. Or that bag gets broken down and distributed all over the world on beaches as super fine particles that appear just like sand. The fact that this is happening is that there are things like this happening and there isn’t enough research or enough being done to stop or prevent it from happening is unsettling.
To find more about what is happening about this, research in addition to what was mentioned in the article, could probably found from Earth Island Journal, or other science sites or magazines.
Filed under: Fall 2009, Reading Response
