Drowning the Ocean in Plastic

Lynn Students and Faculty Discuss Plastic Waste

Waste from plastic, a non-biodegradable material, has been linked to the deaths of millions of animals every year and is particularly damaging to marine life and ecosystems.

While the three R’s of reducing, reusing and recycling help generally decrease the quantity of plastic waste, not all plastic items can be recycled. Plastic that is not recycled will eventually find its way into the ocean where it will remain for a long time as it is extremely difficult to retrieve plastic waste from the open ocean.

With the media shedding light on the harmful effects of plastic waste, some individuals and companies are trying to prevent and reverse the damage done by plastic pollution. However, others feel efforts to combat plastic pollution will be insignificant unless they are globally unanimous.

iPulse set out to see what the students and faculty at Lynn University think about the plastic waste crisis that is plaguing the globe. Here’s what they had to say:

“It doesn’t bother me at all,” said Dylan Villa, freshman. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“I don’t know enough about that except that I hate plastic straws because they get mushy,” said Sabrina Della Bella, freshman.

“I think that we should try using less plastic because it hurts the environment,” said Alexa Grieco, freshman.

“We have plenty of plastic in the world to be able to reuse what’s existing,” said Adam Hurd, sophomore. “I think that we could do a really good job at recycling that plastic and reusing what we already have.”

“I think it’s horrible,” said Brianna Forrest, freshman. “The environment should not be filled with plastic all over the place.”

“I think it’s great the whole moving to paper straws,” said Elena Tayem, student success coordinator. “Restaurants barely give you straws anymore which is a great initiative.”