This is what can happen to your plastic waste.
A sea turtle was found to have a 12cm plastic straw lodged in its nostril.
Oceanographer Christine Figgener and a research team at Texas A&M University were off the coast of Costa Rica when they came across a male Olive Ridley turtle with something stuck in its nose.
The team initially thought it was a parasitic worm or a hook of some kind, but hours away from medical equipment and facing the possibility of incurring a penalty for moving the turtle, they improvised.
They use a pair of pliers to tease the object free, and the turtle is clearly in a lot of pain. The team don’t know for sure what the object is until they cut away a chunk of it.
‘Don’t fucking tell me it’s a freaking straw,’ says one of the team.
‘That is just stupid.’
It has been estimated that there is six times more plastic in the ocean than there is plankton. Plastic straws are ubiquitous and not biodegradable. They are instead photodegradable, which means they break apart into tiny toxic pieces, according to Silent Springs. In the U.S. alone, more than 500million disposable straws are used every day, which is the equivalent to filling 127 buses.
Environmental groups urge that we switch to reusable glass straws, which are virtually unbreakable and last a lifetime.