Planet or Plastic: Why is Plastic bad for the Ocean & the whole Environment

"A picture is worth a thousand words". It is so true that some pictures can explain the truths/imports which at times are even impossible to explain by words. The June 2018 issue of National Geographic Magazine proves it once again!

The June 2018 issue features an image which at first glance appears to be an iceberg – until you look closely and realize that it’s a flipped plastic carrier bag. The whole edition of the magazine illustrates the disastrous damage we’re doing to the planet with our plastic consumption.

Here are some of the pictures from the magazine; they are not worth mere a thousand words, but is worth for the 9.2 billion tons of plastic besmirching beaches, sullying waterways, and choking hapless wildlife on land and in our oceans.

A Bangladeshi family, on a branch of the Buriganga River, removes labels from plastic bottles, to sell them to a scrap dealer – these wastes are the life for some😟; they make an average around $100 a month. (then imagine the heights of plastic wastes!)

Plastic bottles choke the Cibeles fountain, outside city hall in central Madrid. An art collective called Luzinterruptus filled this and two other Madrid fountains with 60,000 discarded bottles last fall as a way of calling attention to the environmental impact of disposable plastics.


An old plastic fishing net snares a loggerhead turtle in the Mediterranean off Spain – it would have died had the photographer not freed it.

Some animals now live in a world of plastics—like these hyenas scavenging at a landfill in Harar, Ethiopia. They listen for garbage trucks and find much of their food in the trash.


To ride currents, seahorses clutch drifting seagrass or other natural debris. In the polluted waters off the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, this seahorse latched onto a plastic cotton swab—“ a photo I wish didn’t exist,” says photographer Justin Hofman.

There was no plastic available until the late 19th century, the disastrous plastic production started only around 1950, but it went so huge that we already have more than 9.2 billion tons of plastic to deal with😟. Unfortunately, no one could really estimate how much plastic waste is actually being recycled and the rest of everything ends in the oceans.

The plastic-free world may look mere impossible today. But it’s just about putting things into perspective. We don’t have time to wait!. We need progressive policies that shape collective action (and rein in polluting businesses), alongside engaged citizens pushing for change. Let's start from the smallest step that we can make ourselves.

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Pon Paulraj