User:Anon.nim77/Human impact on marine life

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Human activities affect marine life and marine habitats through overfishing, habitat loss, the introduction of invasive species, ocean pollution, textile pollution, ocean acidification and ocean warming. These impact marine ecosystems and food webs and may result in consequences as yet unrecognised for the biodiversity and continuation of marine life forms.

Textile Pollution
Further information: Environmental impact of fashion

Aside from the famous plastic pollution, we sometimes forget that textile pollution also contributes significantly to our environmental issue. Unlike plastic, textile pollution's impact on marine life occurs in its various supply chain processes. One of the most prominent is how microfibers and microplastics from textile were found in our wastewater. This type of waste is most commonly found from our washing machine effluent, where fibers of clothes fall loose during the tumbling process.

Plastic and textile are both created from a chemical structure called polymer. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines polymer as “a chemical compound or mixture of compounds formed by polymerization and consisting essentially of repeating structural units.” For plastic, the common polymer found is PET, polyethylene (PE), or polypropylene (PP), whereas for textile, the polymer found the most abundant in the collection of waste is polyester and nylon textiles.

The Ocean Wise Conservation Association produced a study discussing the textile waste. For polyester, it stated that on average, humans shed around 20 to 800 mg micro polyester waste for every kg textile washed. A smaller amount for nylon is found; for every kg of fabrics washed, we shed around 11 to 63 mg nylon microfiber waste to the waters.

The Association also released a study stating that on average, households in the United States and Canada produce around 135 grams of microfibers, which is equivalent to 22 kilotons of microfibers released to the wastewater annually. These wastewater will go through various waste water treatment plants, however, around 878 tons of those 22 kilotons were left untreated and hence, thrown into the ocean. For comparison, 878 tons of waste is equivalent to around 9 - 10 blue whales in the ocean. This is how much we pollute just from textile.