During the Submerge marine fair, one of the most prevalent pollutants that was talked about was plastics. They would talk about many of the short term solutions to combat plastic pollution. They would set up barriers that would catch plastic debris, collect data on the most common form of plastic being collected (styrofoam from food containers), and where the most trash is coming from. They would do beach clean-ups and collect trash from the rivers, but they end up not being able to collect it all because there are plastic particles. Collecting plastic waste after it ends up in the rivers and beaches are short term solutions because plastic waste is still being produced and still ends up in these places, this leads me to the thought of; what would a long term solution be? I started thinking about solutions that would include greatly reducing or ceasing the use of plastic altogether and use an alternative that is nontoxic and biodegradable. If the trash does end up in the environment it would be able to break down in a short amount of time so if it does end up inside a marine animal it would not stay there for long.
