One of the greatest threats to our wildlife, their natural habitat and our environment is the exponentially growing amount of nonbiodegradable plastic waste. I will discuss the major issues that can occur and the different interventions that was can take to possibly neutralize this ever growing danger.
A single piece of plastic can take decades to break down and dissolve into its natural form. As more and more plastic waste are thrown into oceans and forests they begin to clog and cover the surface water and soil. A plethora of oceanic and soil bound creatures require sunlight and oxygen to survive, the accumulated trash prevents these natural elements to reach their microbiome and can result in suffocation and death. Death of producer animals can disrupt the food chain causing starvation and the subsequent deaths of other consumer animals, those that we raise and eat. Therefore, our fishermen will catch less fish, and other seafood. Our farmers will have poisonous and infertile soil. This will result inevitably to famine.
Furthermore, once these plastic wastes reach our freshwater sources, humanity will suffer water shortages resulting in the destruction of irrigation farms, and can even cause inefficiency in hydroelectric power plants.
One of the best interventions that we can take as early as now is to restrict the production of plastic, and find other biodegradable alternatives like using plant products, and recycling already existing plastic products in our homes. Governments can finance research of plastic-eating bacteria and fungi as well.
Overall, the plastic waste pandemic can cause a multitude of problems in the future which includes, the death of wildlife, hunger, water shortage, and power inefficiencies. However, there is still hope, with the combined effort of the government and the people, we can prevent plastic from destroying our environment.