How Humans Worsen Plastic Pollution by forcing Fungi, Fish to Feast on Trash

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch contains one trillion, eight hundred billion pieces of plastic, with roughly seventy-nine thousand tons of the object floating inside it, but this seems like a good development for an ocean-borne fungus which lives among the thin layers of other microbes, as it feasts on the trash.

Drugs such as methamphetamine and others get consumed by around 269 million people each year, finding their ways into rivers and streams after excretion from the body, but this seems like a nasty development in fish like the brown trout, after they get exposed to the drug pollution.

The planet on a yearly basis harbors 2.1 billion tons of municipal waste, and the figure could reach 3.40 billion in about 30 years through a 70 percent increase, but this is a good development for an animal like the opossum, because it would do anything in order  to access people's garbages for meals.

Creatures like the fungus, fish, and opossum belong to a growing species of animals radically transformed by human excesses, with sea turtles, seabirds, whales, vultures, owls, and numerous others belonging to the crowd, experts predicting a deterioration of the situation.

As the quantity of  plastics continues to expand, so does the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, slated by experts to  double by 2030, with the mass of ocean trash from the plastic predicted to outweigh the fish in the ocean by 2050.

As the global population persists to rise, so does the amount of pharmaceutical product in the environment, and while humans consume a whopping 100,000 tons of the product every year (24 percent in Europe), the figure is slated to increase, as more and more people dump their used drugs to their surroundings.

As the number of people who dump wastes around them continues to show increases yearly, so does the quantity of municipal waste in the environment, predicted to grow from 2.3 billion tons in 2023 to 3.8 billion by 2050, with the global direct cost of waste management expected to expand from its 2020 level of $252 billion.

The plastic-eating fungi, fish, and opossum could become even more radically changed by the rising human excesses through plastic and pharmaceutical pollution, with sea turtles, whales, vultures, seabirds, owls, and others in serious trouble going forwards.

While the fungus that consumes plastic offers promising solutions for addressing plastic pollution, digesting synthetic materials may also stress the metabolism and health of one of the estimated 1.5 million fungi species on earth, impacting on climate change, as this could influence biodiversity and micro-organism and plant-fungi relationship.

The fish species that eat plastic materials number 386 species, two-thirds of all species,  but the rate of plastic consumption by marine fish increases by more than two percent every year, and this could complicate the effects of climate change in the future, as the high mortality rates of the creature from feasting on plastic could lead to population declines, disrupting the marine ecosystem and its associated carbon sequestration processes.

The opossum comprises of 126 species in 18 genera and could potentially mitigate some aspects of climate change through the reduction of landfill wastes, but negative effects could also increase from its habit of eating garbage, as the digestion process of the creature might still produce methane and carbon dioxide.

The fungus, fish, and opossum could intensify the effects of climate change through their eating habits, fuelled by the excesses of human consumption, with the same thing to be said of sea turtles, seabirds, whales, vultures, owls, and all of the rest.

Researchers with Clean Up monitored plastic pollution in oceans, with millions of kilograms removed as of now, and plan to clear up 90 percent of floating ocean plastic pollution by 2040. St. John’s University recycles and reduces food wastes annually, the students and researchers recovering over 6,000 pounds of it to alleviate hunger. The European Union wants to turn down medicine approval on environmental grounds, especially as no nation escaped blame after a sampling of 1,000 sites along 258 rivers in 104 countries.

The effects of fungi, fish, and opossum on climate change could show a reduction through proactive measures like those undertaken by Ocean Clean Up and St Johns University, with creatures such as sea turtles, seabirds, whales, vultures, owls, and all of the rest also showing a decrease on their impacts as well.

What to Eat

Vegan food from Vietnam, Credit, Full of Plants