About

Written 1/27/25

Have you wondered where your trash goes? Every week, you throw your trash in a plastic box, and the next morning it gets magically whizzed away to some faraway place. But did you know not all trash ends up in that faraway place? These pieces of trash enter the ocean. An estimated 33 billion pounds of trash enters the ocean every single year. This happens at remote places that are not developed which garbage trucks cannot reach. They are forced to throw their trash in the river, which eventually leads to the ocean. This is a huge problem in our world, today I will share some statistics and why this problem is harming our Earth.

First of all, let's take a look at how much trash is in the ocean. Older studies have shown that there are about 5 trillion pieces of trash floating in the ocean. But now according to the Ocean Conservancy, a recent study shows that there are over 171 trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean. That is an over 3000% increase in the amount of trash. A bigger problem is that many of these pieces of trash are microplastics. Microplastics are when plastic is breaking down, but it never actually does, and becomes very tiny particles. These particles can get eaten by fish, and then when we eat the fish, we consume the microplastics. In fact, according to the National institute of health, we consume at least 50,000 microplastic particles every year. According to Harvard University, microplastics can cause serious problems like DNA changes. Trash in the ocean can not only harm us, it is harming the organisms in the ocean even more. 

Secondly, let’s look at something even worse than what’s already there. More trash entering the ocean. More plastic and trash is entering the ocean every minute, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. According to Oceana, as mentioned in the introduction, 33 billion pieces of trash enters the ocean every year. That is equivalent to dumping 2 garbage trucks of trash into the ocean every single minute. Then, the trash will harm animals, or eventually become microplastics and harm us humans even more. This might be faster than we can clean things up, so if this doesn’t stop, eventually the ocean would be clogged up with trash. This is why we need to stop littering. 

Lastly, let's look at the impacts of trash in the oceans. The trash in the oceans is harming us and organisms in the ocean. When a plastic bag makes its way into the ocean, many animals, for example sea turtles, can mistake it for food, in this case jellyfish, which is a tasty snack for sea turtles. 

Save Sea Turtles Club (SSTC) is a club to pick up trash and save sea turtles.

Recently, statistics have shown that there are over 5 trillion pieces of trash in the ocean.

The purpose of Save the Sea Turtles Club is to make sure Dilworth's campus is clean, and no animals are hurt. 

Our goal is to remove 217 Home-Depot buckets of trash from the world this year. (Technically the goal is 0 because we don't want trash but whatever)

dsf jkh dfjkdsjhkhsdfjkhewe bsidlghUI Tlrleijut hlaeriu ghiUET Hlaewiuth lid - Anrui. 

aksdjklacsnvjrwbhoijl4eDGSKZ,hvxnbnuclnaw,gjshEGMasyehiudfjbadsuigvxzckJzdf,, - Simon

sstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstcsstc - Chansol