How 

does 

plastic 

pollution 

affect 

the 

oceans? 

Plus: 

how 

you 

can 

help 

save 

them.

In all fairness, we didn’t know either. Until our sustainable innovation specialist enlightened us. And now we’ve enlightened you. So we’re all up to speed. Except there’s another ocean phenomenon we’d like to talk about. Currents full of floating bits of plastic. The biggest one measures 1,6 million square kilometres. Which is such a big number we had trouble imagining it. In case you do too, that’s about three times the size of France worth of plastic pollution in our oceans. They call it: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

What is plastic soup?

Impressive, right? Wrong. Impressive is that time you managed to bake a chocolate souffle without it deflating. Or when you finished that 10k race you barely trained for. Those are good things. Plastic pollution is not, we can probably all agree. Yet every year, 8 million tons of plastic waste (like single-use water bottles) end up in our oceans. And there it stays, forever. Slowly breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces that sink to the bottom or are suspended in currents. Altogether turning our oceans into a plastic soup.

Why plastic pollution is a problem

Ok, so you get it. There’s plastic polluting our oceans. Which sounds pretty bad, but is it? Well, Y-E-S. While floating around for-ever plastics get plenty of time to release toxic substances into the water. Not good. Additionally, a variety of sea life can’t tell the difference between bits of plastic and food. (You try telling a deliciously nutritious fish egg apart from a plastic pellet…) And even degradable plastics can cause lots of damage since they release nutrients that allow excessive growth of algae. Which may seem fairly harmless but in fact can use up all the oxygen in the water, destroying ecosystems.

Any good news?

Actually, yes. We didn’t just write a blog to spread doom and gloom. We wrote it to help you become aware of an issue that you can help solve. Because starting today, you can play a part in reducing the amount of plastic waste that enters our oceans. By joining the Dopper Wave to put single-use water bottles out of business. Therefore reducing the amount of plastic soup. And increasing the happiness of sea turtles everywhere. Very good news, we’d say.

Saving the oceans. Sip by sip.

How you can start? By getting a reusable water bottle to drink tap water from. Simple as that. Because that way, every time you get thirsty, you won’t have to buy a single-use plastic water bottle. Meaning that same single-use plastic bottle doesn’t run the risk of ending up in our oceans. As plastic soup. And yes, that makes a difference. After all, in a wave of change every drop counts.

Fancy receiving more ocean related content? Sign up to our newsletter for a regular dose. After you’ve picked out your new reusable Dopper water bottle, that is. Happy ocean saving.