An ever-increasing amount of plastic pollution is entering our oceans, with devastating effects on marine life. One Oregonian embarked on a cleanup project to rid their beach of plastic trash and turned the results into an I Spy game of sorts.
"Plastics found at the beach on the OR coast; see anything recognizable?" the poster wrote, sharing with the other members of the r/Anticonsumption subreddit. "Some are obvious but some I can't figure out what they are 'supposed' to be."
Among the items that the original poster identified were "a plastic fork, a cork, a toothbrush handle, shotgun shell, dog collar link, plastic bottle caps galore, fishing plastics, and a coat hanger hook." Other Redditors chimed in that they saw items ranging from specific types of fishing lures to syringe caps.
"Thank for picking up all that crap," one poster wrote.
Plastic pollution is a constantly growing problem for our oceans, with an estimated eight million individual pieces of plastic pollution making their way into the ocean every day, and a total estimated 13.2 million tons of plastic dumped into the ocean every year.
An estimated 100,000 marine mammals die from plastic pollution every year — and 81 out of 123 marine mammal species are known to have eaten or become entangled in plastic. Some estimates show that by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish, by weight.
One of the ways we can combat this growing crisis is to eschew plastic products as much as possible. Although disposable plastic products are ubiquitous in our society, that just means that we have to be extra vigilant about avoiding them.
A few of the steps that you can take at home to decrease your plastic consumption include repurposing empty product containers, ditching single-use water bottles, and finding better alternatives to single-use coffee products.
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