A Letter to Senator Feinstein

Dear Senator Feinstein:

I am a college student writing to inform you about the harms of plastics on marine life and ask that you help ban and/or tax single-use plastics. I’m sure that you have heard this many times; in the past few years, the advocacy on climate change and reduction of single-use plastics has increased marginally. I myself only recently started my efforts towards helping the environment. Unfortunately, for me, I do not see this as a choice; the world that I live in right now is already polluted, and environments are collapsing right before our eyes. As I continue to learn in college and grow as an adult, these changes will not stop, but rather, will fester and grow until it is all we know.

I would rather not live in such a world.

This is why I need the help of people like you: people who have the power and authority to help enact the change that will kickstart the end of environmental damage. Let me start by letting you know how bad the damage is.

According to the article Marine plastics from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, over 300 million tons of plastic are produced every year. Half of the plastic produced is single-use. Of this 300 million, 8 million tons end up in the ocean–and that’s only an estimate. Because the amount of plastic we are producing is something unprecedented, we don’t yet know the scale of the damage that this plastic waste is causing to marine life. For example, it is only recently realized that the plastics in the ocean are degraded by sunlight, waves, and wind into micro pieces. These pieces are dispersed all over the ocean with no real way of cleaning up. As Jambeck (2018) states, these are then ingested by animals such as fish, whales, manatees, dolphins, sea turtles, tiny crustaceans, shellfish, and birds. It is to the point that, according to the article Ocean plastics pollution, nearly 700 species eat and/or get caught in plastic litter. The plastic, micro and not, is harmful in a variety of ways. It can cause the animal to choke and suffocate. It can also pierce the lining of the animal’s organs. It can deceive the animal into thinking that it is full because its stomach is full of plastic, and then starve to death.

And that’s only the start to the ways it harms marine life. These are all discoveries that scientists have made, but there are numerous effects that the plastic in our oceans may have that we simply do not know about yet. For example, in terms of long-term effect, it may be changing the way that animals exist by finding the plastic pleasant to taste or smell. In the same article from Jambeck (2018), it is stated that some fish have begun to prefer cylindrical plastic pieces, confusing the plastic to be potential prey. When bacteria grows on the surface of plastics, birds eat it without knowing it is not food.

The effect of plastics on marine life is already bad, and it’s only going to get worse. It’s not just marine life that is in danger; humans are dependent on the biodiversity of environments. Once these environments start to crash, our society will start to crash. From consumption of plastic through seafood, to lack of recreational fishing, to losing natural functions of the environment, having marine life that is not polluted is essential for us.

This is why I ask that you help start banning and/or taxing the use of single-use plastics. People need to be more aware of the dangers of the throw-away culture that we have gotten so used to. Taxing and banning single-use plastics will draw people’s attention to the issue. It will help keep people more responsible for how much single-use plastic they choose to use. Most of all, it will help to start reducing how much plastic we put into the ocean. By doing so, we can start healing our ocean and allow it time and space to recover from the pollution that we have made it undergo.

I hope that this letter can help you consider helping our oceans more. Marine life damage is not something that can be overlooked; it is something that will genuinely affect our livelihoods, the environment, and all of our futures. When we choose to ignore it, we are choosing to ignore having a healthier life and earth.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Citizen

Citations

Jambeck, J. (2018, April). Marine plastics. Smithsonian Ocean. Retrieved October 31, 2021, from https://ocean.si.edu/conservation/pollution/marine-plastics.

Marine plastics. IUCN. (2018, December 5). Retrieved October 31, 2021, from https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/marine-plastics.

Ocean plastics pollution. Ocean Plastics Pollution. (n.d.). Retrieved October 31, 2021, from https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/ocean_plastics/.

Parker, L. (2019, June 7). Plastic pollution facts and information. Environment. Retrieved October 31, 2021, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/ plastic-pollution.