Pieces of plastics are often found in hand soaps, toothpaste, and facial cleansers as “scrubbers”. These small bits of plastics are simply washed down the drain, people are often unaware there is plastic in the products they are buying. Water treatment facilities are not equipped for these small plastics and they pass right through filtration systems and go back into rivers, and washed out to sea 1. These pieces of plastic are hard to see in bodies of water due to their size.
There countless ways plastic gets into oceans besides our soap, weather is also a contributing factor in ocean pollution, flooding, hurricanes, and tsunamis all misplace trash into the oceans 1. It would make sense that these natural phenomena would take away some of the debris from the destruction that they caused. Once these occur what was swept out to sea is often forgotten as attention is turned to help victims.
Another way that plastic enters the ocean that most people haven’t thought of is the production of plastic itself: manufactures create plastic materials from resin pellets called nibs, the improper packaging, and spillage during transportation can result in these “nibs” being found in oceans 1.
There is not one distinct source of plastic’s origin in the ocean. The problem is much more complex than don’t litter. There are many factors that play a part and need to be dealt with. This is a worldwide epidemic; we have an addiction to plastic: a product that lasts a lifetime yet is intended for one-time use.