If I were a superhero, I would change many things about our current world. Covid 19, corruption, wars, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Not that we have many left. Anyway, a superhero can only change so many things. Since I am passionate about surfing, kayaking, and paddling, I would focus on the ocean. There are a lot of problems that have to do with the sea. Like, a lot. Nevertheless, the most pressing problem to do with the ocean right now is pollution.
So to fix ocean pollution, I would need to see what causes it in the first place. The main problem is plastics. Microplastics are the most dangerous to both creatures of the sea and above. Many albatrosses and other birds who hunt fish are dying after mistaking large heaps of trash floating around as schools of fish. In fact, there’s even a patch of plastic twice the size of Texas floating around in between Hawaii and California. So, is that the answer? Eliminate plastics? The sad truth is that us humans have kinda cornered ourselves into depending on plastic, so that wouldn’t be easy. Luckily, there are other ways to stop ocean pollution than banishing plastic forever.
All regular plastics take ten to a thousand years to decompose. That means if you threw out something made out of plastic, it could still be around in the year 3000. Also, that plastic water bottle you just threw away? It won’t be going away for another 450 years or so. To put this in perspective, say someone drank and threw out a plastic water bottle the day George Washington was born. That water bottle would probably outlive every single person born before 2050. If you didn’t already get it, plastic takes a really really really long time to decompose. But then is that the answer? Make plastic biodegradable? Yes! That would be a great way to solve pollution! Unfortunately, the cost of that would be very very expensive.
The last thing we could do to stop ocean pollution is to get rid of the plastics before they reach the sea, and I don’t mean putting the plastics in landfills. We would need to burn, compact, recycle, or reuse it. All of it. Or some combination of the three. It is impossible to recycle all of the plastic we currently have in the world. Even if we could, what would we do with it once we did? Compacting could be a solution, but it would only be a matter of time before we ran out of space again. Burning it would put more carbon dioxide into the air, which would basically increase the rate our planet is warming at. To put it simply, burning is very bad.
In the long run, there is no easy solution to stopping ocean pollution. All the current solutions we have are short term, expensive, or more damaging. Sure, it’d be amazing if a superhero could come along and do some cool power thing that solves the problem forever. Sadly, superheroes are not common here. The most effective thing we can do to solve problems in this world is to research, find correct, factual information, form ideas, and make your voice heard.
