Plastic Pollution by Arsh Chadha

Good morning boys and girls, my name is Arsh Chadha and today I will be talking about plastic pollution! I hope you enjoy it and learn something from my speech.

Firstly, what is plastic pollution? Well, plastic pollution is when there are pieces of plastic where they shouldn’t be, for example in the sea. It's destroying our environment. Today we humans are using more plastic than we have ever used before! It’s been estimated that 8 million little pieces of plastic are entering our ocean every single day. If you’re wondering how it’s getting into the ocean, it’s from people littering all over the place and soon that litter gets washed with the rain into the rivers and streams, which lead to the ocean.

Plastic lasts for a long time which explains why we use it so much but did you know that a plastic bottle can last up to 450 years in the marine environment? It slowly disintegrates into tiny microscopic pieces, which never really go away. This means that every plastic product is still with us till this day. It is disgusting! It really is.

It's wiping out all the marine animals: the fish, turtles, dolphins, seals, seabirds and even whales. They mistake the plastic for food and they eat it and end up dying with their stomach full of plastic. It truly is upsetting and heart-breaking. The worst thing is that it’s impossible to just go there and collect it all; it’s because most pieces are like the size of a rice grain or even smaller and there is a lot of it from bottles to straws and plastic bags. At this point, all we can do is stop using it. Instead of using plastic bags we need to start using reusable shopping bags. It’s healthier for our environment and it's cheaper because we don’t need to continue buying bags, which means you get to save your money. The same for plastic bottles, buy one that’s refillable and one that doesn’t harm our environment.  We are counting on you to help save the 100,000 marine creatures that die every year because of plastic pollution.

Thank you for listening to my speech, I hope it inspires you to stop using plastic and to save the animals that are suffering because of us.