RP150 Save Our Seas

 RP150 Save Our Seas

In August 2000, people in the Australian seaside town of Cairns found something very unusual on their beach: a whale. It was sick, and had come out of the ocean. It soon died on the sand.

When vets looked inside the dead whale, they found six square meters of plastic. The animal had eaten plastic bags that humans had thrown into the sea. Another whale died in Terschelling, in the Netherlands, in 2013. It had swallowed plastic bags, rope, flowerpots, and even a spray bottle. Turtles eat plastic bags all the time, mistaking them for jellyfish.

In May 2003, a platypus was found near a river in Tasmania, an Australian island. A plastic bag was wrapped around its body. It survived, and was named Lucky by its rescuers. Sadly, many other platypuses are not so lucky.

Animals are dying because of our trash. Plastic bags are a particular problem, because they last such a long time. While paper bags break down in months, plastic bags take a minimum of 10 years! But they are light and cheap, and people use them every day without thinking.

Many countries have tried to manage the problem of plastic bags. Bangladesh was the first country to ban them, and others, including China, have adopted full or partial bans. Governments have asked people to use cloth bags at the supermarket instead.

We cannot solve this problem overnight. There is already too much plastic in our oceans. However, we can stop producing more. Plastic comes from natural gas and petrol, which are bad for the environment anyway. Both humans and animals will benefit if plastic bags are banned everywhere.