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Garbology

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Garbology
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Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash is a non-fictional work written by Edward Humes, in which he demonstrates the effects of waste which human’s have relentlessly produced over the previous decades. In chapter 6, Nerds vs. Nurdles, Humes exhibits the damage that half a century of careless consumption has had on the environment and ecosystems. Our society today has been blind to its surroundings as a product of consumer apathy and does not realize the detrimental effects of our wasting until it is too large a task to resolve. Society neglects to think beyond the extent of the present and the potential consequences and harms materials could bring once we decided that it is no longer beneficial and toss them out. Scientists cannot even begin to predict the approximate amount of plastic nurdles that floats within the ocean. Without any awareness of the amount of trash, it makes the mission of cleaning the ocean impossible. An individual’s never satisfied hunger for the newest technology continually swells the ocean with increasing plastic. Synthetic material is viewed as a necessity for making everyday life easier. Ironically, plastic gradually finds a path back to harm society that appreciates it so greatly. Through bio-magnification, plastic finds a way back to humans through the consumption of seafood; additionally humans ingest chemicals from synthetics which aquatic animals previously consumed. As plastic remains in the oceans it will continually find a path up the food chain, consequently humans will inescapably ingest their own trash through fish and crustaceans which occupy large portions of daily diets. Consumers also avoid the most detrimental aspect of ocean dumping, the result it has on phytoplankton, microscopic organisms that account for virtually 50% of oxygen. By blindly consuming and creating more garbage, civilization is inadvertently suffocating itself. The lacks of concern consumers and producers have for disposal methods are not

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