Plastic pollution

Plastic pollution involves the accumulation of plastic products in theenvironment that adversely [1] affects wildlife, wildlife habitat, or humans. Many types and forms of plastic pollution exist. Plastic pollution can adversely affect lands, waterways and oceans. Plastic reduction efforts have occurred in some areas in attempts to reduce plastic consumption and promote plastic recycling. The prominence of plastic pollution is correlated with plastics being inexpensive and durable, which lends to high levels of [2] plastics used by humans.

Types[edit]
Plastic pollution occurs in many forms, including but not limited to littering, marine debris(man-made waste that has been released in a lake, sea, ocean, or waterway), plastic particle water pollution, plastic netting and Friendly Floatees. A large percentage of plastic produced each year is used to make singleuse, disposable packaging items or products which will get permanently thrown out within one [3] year. Often, consumers of the various types of plastics mainly use them for one purpose and then discard or recycle them. Per the United States Environmental Protection Agency, in 2011 plastics [4] constituted over 12% of municipal solid waste. In the 1960s, plastics constituted less than 1% of [4] municipal solid waste.

Effects on the environment[edit]

Land[edit]
Chlorinated plastic can release harmful chemicals into the surrounding soil, which can then seep [5] into groundwater or other surrounding water sources. This can cause serious harm to the species that drink this water. Landfill areas are constantly piled high with many different types of plastics. In these landfills, there are many microorganisms which speed up the biodegradation of plastics. Regarding biodegradable plastics, as they are broken down, methane is released, which is a very [6] powerful greenhouse gas that contributes significantly to global warming. Some landfills are taking initiative by installing devices to capture the methane and use it for energy, but most have not incorporated such technology. Release of methane does not only occur in landfills, biodegradable plastics also degrade if left on the ground, in which case degradation takes longer to occur.

Ocean[edit]
Nurdles are plastic pellets (a type of microplastic) that are shipped in this form, often in cargo ships, to be [7] used for the creation of plastic products. A significant amount of nurdles are spilled into oceans, and it [7] has been estimated that globally, around 10% of beach litter is nurdles. Plastics in oceans typically degrade within a year, but not entirely, and in the process toxic chemicals such asbisphenol [8] A and polystyrene can leach into waters from some plastics. Polystyrene pieces and nurdles are the most common types of plastic pollution in oceans, and combined with plastic bags and food containers [9] make up the majority of oceanic debris. In 2012, it was estimated that there was approximately 165 [8] million tons of plastic pollution in the world's oceans.

Effects on animals[edit]
Plastic pollution has the potential to poison animals, which can then adversely affect human food [10][11] supplies. Plastic pollution has been described as being highly detrimental to large marine mammals,

described in the book Introduction to Marine Biology as posing the "single greatest threat" to [12] them. Some marine species, such as sea turtles, have been found to contain large proportions of [10] plastics in their stomach. When this occurs, the animal typically starves, because the plastic blocks the [10] animal's digestive tract. Marine mammals sometimes become entangled in plastic products such as [10] nets, which can harm or kill them. Over 260 species, including invertebrates, have been reported to have either ingested plastic or become entangled in the plastic. When a species gets entangled, its movement is seriously reduced, therefore making it very difficult to find food. Being entangled usually [13] results in death or severe lacerations and ulcers. It has been estimated that over 400,000 marine [10] mammals perish annually due to plastic pollution in oceans. In 2004, it was estimated that seagulls in [14] the North Sea had an average of thirty pieces of plastic in their stomachs.

Effects on humans[edit]
Plastics contain many different types of chemicals, depending on the type of plastic. The addition of chemicals is the main reason why these plastics have become so multipurpose, however this has problems associated with it. Some of the chemicals used in plastic production have the potential to be [15] absorbed by human beings through skin absorption. A lot is unknown on how severely humans are physically affected by these chemicals. Some of the chemicals used in plastic production can [15] cause dermatitis upon contact with human skin. In many plastics, these toxic chemicals are only used in trace amounts, but significant testing is often required to ensure that the toxic elements are contained [15] within the plastic by inert material or polymer. Plastic pollution can also affect humans in which it may [16] create an eyesore that interferes with enjoyment of the natural environment.

Reduction efforts[edit]
Household items made of various types of plastic.

Efforts to reduce the use of plastics and to promote plastic recycling have occurred. Some supermarkets charge their customers for plastic bags, and in some places more efficient reusable or biodegradable materials are being used in place of plastics. Some communities and businesses have put a ban on some [17] commonly used plastic items, such as bottled water and plastic bags.

Collection[edit]
The two common forms of waste collection include curbside collection and the use of drop-off recycling centers. About 87 percent of the population in the U.S.A. (273 million people) have access to curbside and drop-off recycling centers. In curbside collection, which is available to about 63 percent of the U.S.A. population (193 million people), people place designated plastics in a special bin to be picked up by a [18] public or private hauling company. Most curbside programs collect more than one type of plastic resin; [19] usually both PETE and HDPE. At drop-off recycling centers, which are available to 68 percent of the [18] U.S.A. population (213 million people), people take their recyclables to a centrally located facility. Once collected, the plastics are delivered to a material recovery facility (MRF) or handler for sorting into singleresin streams to increase product value. The sorted plastics are then baled to reduce shipping costs to [19] reclaimers. There are varying rates of recycling per type of plastic, and in 2011, the overall plastic [4] recycling rate was approximately 8% in the United States. Approximately 2.7 million tons of plastics [4] were recycled in the U.S. in 2011. Some plastics are recycled more than others; in 2011 "29 percent of [4] HDPE bottles and 29 percent of PET bottles and jars were recycled."

Globalization
The term Globalization (or globalisation) refers to processes of international integration arising from the [1][2] interchange of world views, products, ideas, and other aspects of culture. Advances intransportation and telecommunications infrastructure, including the rise of the telegraph and its posterity the Internet, are major factors in globalization, generating further interdependence of economic and [3] cultural activities. Though several scholars place the origins of globalization in modern times, others trace its history long before the European age of discovery and voyages to the New World. Some even trace the origins to the [4][5] third millennium BCE. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the connectedness of the world's economies and cultures grew very quickly. The term globalization has been increasing use since the mid-1980s and especially since the mid[6] 1990s. In 2000, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) identified four basic aspects of globalization: trade and transactions, capital and investment movements, migration and movement of [7] people and the dissemination of knowledge. Further, environmental challenges such asclimate change, cross-boundary water, air pollution, and over-fishing of the ocean are linked with [8] globalization. Globalizing processes affect and are affected by business and work organization,economics, socio-cultural resources, and the natural environment.

Overview[edit]
Extent of the Silk Road and Spice trade routes owned by the Ottoman Empire in 1453 spurring exploration

Humans have interacted over long distances for thousands of years. The overland Silk Road that connected Asia, Africa, and Europe is a good example of the transformative power of translocal exchange that existed in the "Old World". Philosophy, religion, language, the arts, and other aspects of culture spread and mixed as nations exchanged products and ideas. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Europeans made important discoveries in their exploration of the oceans, including the start of transatlantic travel to the "New World" of the Americas. Global movement of people, goods, and ideas expanded significantly in the following centuries. Early in the 19th century, the development of new forms of transportation (such as the steamship andrailroads) and telecommunications that "compressed" time and space allowed for [9] increasingly rapid rates of global interchange. In the 20th century, road vehicles,intermodal transport, and airlines made transportation even faster. The advent of electronic communications, most notably mobile phones and the Internet, connected billions of people in new ways by the year 2010.
Eastern Telegraph Company 1901 chart of underseatelegraph cabling, an example of modern globalizingtechnology in the beginning of the 20th century.

Etymology and usage[edit]

The term globalization is derived from the word globalize, which refers to the emergence of an [10] international network of social and economic systems. One of the earliest known usages of the term as a noun was in a 1930 publication entitled,Towards New Education, where it denoted a holistic view of [11] human experience in education. A related term, corporate giants, was coined by Charles Taze [12] Russell in 1897 to refer to the largely national trusts and other large enterprises of the time. By the 1960s, both terms began to be used as synonyms by economists and other social scientists. It then

reached the mainstream press in the later half of the 1980s. Since its inception, the concept of globalization has inspired competing definitions and interpretations, with antecedents dating back to the great movements of trade and empire across Asia and the Indian Ocean from the 15th century [13][14] onwards. Due to the complexity of the concept, research projects, articles, and discussions often [1] remain focused on a single aspect of globalization. Roland Robertson, professor of sociology at University of Aberdeen, an early writer in the field, defined globalization in 1992 as: ...the compression of the world and the intensification of the consciousness of the world as a whole. Sociologists Martin Albrow and Elizabeth King define globalization as: ...all those processes by which the peoples of the world are incorporated into a single world society. In The Consequences of Modernity, Anthony Giddens uses the following definition: Globalization can thus be defined as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa.
[16] [2] [15]

Global financial system[edit]

Main article: Global financial system By the early 21st century, a worldwide framework of legal agreements, institutions, and both formal and informal economic actors came together to facilitate international flows of financial capital for purposes of investment and trade financing. This global financial system emerged during the first modern wave of economic globalization, marked by the establishment ofcentral banks, multilateral treaties, and intergovernmental organizations aimed at improving the transparency, regulation, and effectiveness [119] of international markets. The world economy became increasingly financially integrated throughout the 20th century as nations liberalized capital accounts and deregulated financial sectors. With greater exposure to volatile capital flows, a series of financial crises in Europe, Asia, and Latin America had contagious effects on other countries. By the early 21st century, financial institutions had become increasingly large with a more sophisticated and interconnected range of investment activities. Thus, when the United States experienced a financial crisis early in that century, it quickly propagated among other nations. It became known as the global financial crisis and is recognized as the catalyst for the worldwide Great Recession.

Biosphere
The biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also be termed the zone of life on Earth, a closed system (apart from solar and cosmic radiation and heat from the interior of the Earth), and largely [1] self-regulating. By the most general biophysiologicaldefinition, the biosphere is the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships, including their interaction with the elements of the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. The biosphere is postulated to have evolved, beginning with a process of biopoesis (life created naturally from non-living matter such as simple organic compounds) or biogenesis (life created from living matter), at least some 3.5 billion years [2][3] ago. The earliest evidences for life on Earth are graphite found to be biogenic in 3.7 billion-year-

old metasedimentary rocks discovered in Western Greenland and microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 [5][6] billion-year-oldsandstone discovered in Western Australia. In a general sense, biospheres are any closed, self-regulating systems containing ecosystems; including [7] artificial ones such asBiosphere 2 and BIOS-3; and, potentially, ones on other planets or moons.

[4]

Origin and use of the term[edit]

The term "biosphere" was coined by geologist Eduard Suess in 1875, which he defined as: "The place on Earth's surface where life dwells." While this concept has a geological origin, it is an indication of the effect of both Charles Darwin and Matthew F. Maury on the Earth sciences. The biosphere's ecological context comes from the 1920s (see Vladimir I. Vernadsky), preceding the 1935 introduction of the term "ecosystem" by Sir Arthur Tansley (see ecology history). Vernadsky defined ecology as the science of the biosphere. It is aninterdisciplinary concept for integrating astronomy, geophysics, meteorology, biogeography, evolution, geology, geochemistry,hydrolo gy and, generally speaking, all life and Earth sciences.
[8]

Narrow definition[edit]
A familiar scene on Earth which simultaneously shows the lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere.

Geochemists define the biosphere as being the total sum of living organisms (the "biomass" or "biota" as [citation needed] referred to by biologists and ecologists). In this sense, the biosphere is but one of four separate components of the geochemical model, the other three being lithosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. The word ecosphere, coined during the 1960s, encompasses both biological and [citation needed] physical components of the planet. The Second International Conference on Closed Life Systems defined biospherics as the science and [citation technology of analogs and models of Earth's biosphere; i.e., artificial Earth-like biospheres. needed] Others may include the creation of artificial non-Earth biospheresfor example, human-centered [citation needed] biospheres or a native Martian biosphereas part of the topic of biospherics.

Gaia hypothesis[edit]
During the early 1970s, the British chemist James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, a microbiologist from the United States, added to the hypothesis, specifically noting the ties between the biosphere and other Earth systems. For example, when carbon dioxide amounts increase in the atmosphere, plants grow more quickly. As their growth continues, they remove more and more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Many scientists are now involved with new topics of study that examine interactions between biotic and abiotic factors in the biosphere, such as geobiology and geomicrobiology. Ecosystems occur when communities and their physical environment work together as a system. The difference between this and a biosphere is simplethe biosphere is everything in general terms.
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Extent of Earth's biosphere[edit]

Water covers 71% of the Earth's surface. Image is the Blue Marblephotographed from Apollo 17.

Every part of the planet, from the polar ice caps to the equator, features life of some kind. Recent advances in microbiology have demonstrated that microbes live deep beneath the Earth's terrestrial surface, and that the total mass of microbial life in so-called "uninhabitable zones" may, in biomass, exceed all animal and plant life on the surface. The actual thickness of the biosphere on earth is difficult to measure. Birds typically fly at altitudes of 650 to 1,800 metres, and fish that live deep underwater can [2] be found down to -8,372 metres in the Puerto Rico Trench. There are more extreme examples for life on the planet: Rppell's vulture has been found ataltitudes of 11,300 metres; bar-headed geese migrate at altitudes of at least 8,300 metres;yaks live at elevations between 3,200 to 5,400 metres above sea level; mountain goats live up to 3,050 metres. Herbivorous animals at these elevations depend on lichens, grasses, and herbs. Microscopic organisms live at such extremes that, taking them into consideration, the thickness of the biosphere is much greater. Culturable microbes have been found in the Earth's upper atmosphere as high [citation needed] as 41 km (25 mi) (Wainwright et al., 2003, in FEMS Microbiology Letters). It is unlikely, however, that microbes are active at such altitudes, where temperatures and air pressure are extremely minor and ultraviolet radiation very intense. More likely, these microbes were brought into the upper atmosphere by winds or possibly volcanic eruptions. Barophilic marine microbes have been found at more than 10 km (6 mi) depth in the Mariana Trench (Takamia et al., 1997, in FEMS Microbiology [citation needed] Letters). In fact, single-celled life forms have been found in the deepest part of the Mariana [9] Trench, Challenger Deep, at depths of 36,201 feet (11,034 meters). Microbes are not limited to the air, water or the Earth's surface. Culturable thermophilic microbes have been extracted from cores drilled [10][11] more than 5 km (3 mi) into the Earth's crust in Sweden, from rocks between 65-75 C. Temperature increases with increasing depth into the Earth's crust. The rate at which the temperature increases depends on many factors, including type of crust (continental vs. oceanic), rock type, geographic location, etc. The greatest known temperature at which microbial life can exist is 122 C (Methanopyrus kandleri Strain 116), and it is likely that the limit of life in the "deep biosphere" is defined by temperature rather than absolute depth.