The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is a federal agency that creates laws, one of them being to protect our oceans.
In the Pacific Ocean lies a swamp of plastic waste that has been said to be bigger than the size of Texas and is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex.
These plastics may have been turned into to recycling center at one point then thrown out by the recyclers because not all plastics can be recycled. For instance, a “plastic spray bottle trigger” contains 4 different types of plastics so therefore only a few pieces can be broken off and saved. Other times the labels are very difficult to remove so again they are then discarded as waste.
In addition, "some 299 million tons of plastics were produced in 2013, representing a 4 percent increase over 2012 [and] “recovery and recycling... remain insufficient, and millions of tons of plastics end up in landfills and oceans each year” (www.worldwatch.org).
These plastics can last in our environment for up to 1,000 years and large corporations are mass producing plastics and today everything is wrapped in plastic, ex., plastic cups are wrapped in plastic bags and then again placed in a another plastic bag at checkout.
The EPA needs to regulate the amount of plastic’s that corporations can produce eventually leading big corporations to seek alternatives that promote a eco-concious way of life.
