All the things we have been learning about water pollution made me want to do some digging about how pollution is affecting us on the larger scale. I have a friend who still lives in the Marshall Islands, and she has made it her personal mission to educate everyone about the harm pollution does to our oceans. Now this is a big concern for me because the highest point in the Marshall Islands is only 6 feet above sea level. All it takes is a rise in the ocean level by a couple inches, and my islands could be in real trouble!
My friend, Carrie, recently posted an article to her Facebook page that explains how troublesome our oceans' condition has really become! Trash that starts on the side of the road can eventually end up in the middle of the ocean, and once it gets there and starts to change the ocean's ecosystem, the damage can be irreversible. It seems hard to imagine that in Murfreesboro, TN, hundreds of miles away from any ocean, our trash can have an impact on them and that the oceans' overall "health" would be even an issue. But if the ocean's health changes, our entire world changes.
I don't want to beat anyone over the head with this topic so I'll just leave you with a quote from the article, and encourage you to read it and see how you can make a change. We are already so deep into this, but if everyone took small steps to reduce their waste, we could see the change begin to happen!
"If we are doubling what we are putting into the ocean on a ten-year basis, there's no way to keep up," says Chris Wilcox, an ecologist at CSIRO. "It would be as if you were vacuuming your living room, and I'm standing at the doorway with a bag of dust and a fan. You can constantly keep vacuuming, but you could never catch up."
I didn't really think of our negative impact on the ocean being so far away, but it truly does. Thanks for such an informative post!
ReplyDeleteIt's so scary to think about this stuff. Luckily, I had an AWESOME 8th grade teacher who taught us about recycling and the impact that waste has on our land and seas. I think he got through to at least a handful of us. There is hope that we can teach our students and our own children about the harm that we are doing and actually see some results from our efforts. It all starts when they're young!! Good on you for caring enough to inform people!
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