Support efforts to limit plastic waste in oceans

There's a good chance June being World Ocean Month has slipped your radar - and as a Midwesterner, that news may seem irrelevant to you anyway. Though the closest thing we have to an ocean is Lake Michigan, the sea still plays an enormous role in our lives. If you eat seafood, take certain medicines or vitamins, enjoy David Attenborough documentaries or breathe oxygen, you have the ocean to thank.

Unfortunately, as our daily lives have become saturated with plastics, so too have plastics invaded every corner of our blue planet. Every year, 33 billion pounds of plastic enter the ocean - think two garbage trucks' worth of plastic every minute - and 22 million pounds enter the Great Lakes. Upward of 900 marine species are adversely affected by plastic pollution, with microplastics tainting every level of the ocean's food chain. We have a responsibility to do something about it.

Marine life isn't alone in its intake of plastics; day in and day out, we humans are eating, drinking and breathing plastic too. It's in our fruits, vegetables, meat, seafood, packaged foods, even our salt. And as plastic production increases (as it's expected to), so will the amount of plastic in our ocean. If nothing changes, the amount of plastic entering the ocean is projected to triple by 2040.

We need to stop this mess at the source. Government policies are critical in prompting companies to stop overproducing plastic and shift to sustainable alternatives. The federal Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act would phase out unnecessary single-use plastic, put a pause on new plastics facilities and hold plastic producers accountable for their waste.

What better way for us to celebrate World Ocean Month than to call on members of Congress to support this comprehensive legislation?

Claire Griffin

Deer Park