Plastic is so pervasive that I sometimes forget it's all around me—in toothpaste, in makeup, in clothes. But plastic is also omnipresent in places untouched by people, and one sobering forecast shook me: By 2050, it's likely that plastic in the oceans will outweigh all the oceans' fish. Some reports predict 850-950 million tons of plastic (the equivalent in weight of 4.5 million blue whales). Given all the plastic we've put into the oceans over decades—the present rate is 4 to 12 million tons of plastic per year—you might think some species will have adapted somehow, perhaps taking a liking to the synthetic polymers.
Well, Swedish researchers recently found that European perch larvae devour the stuff. "Naïve larvae that come across these plastic particles believe that it's a resource that they need to ingest large amounts of, almost like teens only eating unhealthy fast foods," says Oona Lönnstedt, a marine biologist at Uppsala University. "This is of great concern as larvae don't get any energy to grow if they only ingest plastic."
The plastic will all be recycled when Waterworld arrives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @12:07PM
All these million tons of un-degraded plastic is sequestered carbon.
And when "environmentalists" simultaneously scream about atmospheric CO2 *and* "non-biodegradable" plastics - either they are dumber than European perch larvae, or they expect that level of dumb from their flock.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 19 2016, @12:21PM
Or, consider that there just might be more than one type of pollution that damages our environment. To put it bluntly, sequestering carbon in plastic is not a good idea. Better to leave that carbon in the ground by not using the oil feedstock to make the plastic in the first place.