Climate Change: Plastic Pollution In Kootenay Lake

Climate change is a change in the usual weather. This could be a change in how much rain a place usually gets in a year or it could be a change in a place's usual temperature for a month or season. Climate change is also a change in Earth's climate. Weather can change in just a few hours but changes in climate can take hundreds or even millions of years. Plastic pollution in lakes and oceans affect climate change because it harms air quality and creates ocean toxicity. Plastic contributes to ecosystem disruption and habitat destruction. In my project I will be testing the water and shoreline in Kootenay lake to see how much plastic is polluting our lake.
Scientists are trying to come up with ways to combat plastic pollution. A team of Japanese researchers described a species of bacteria that can break the molecular bonds of one of the world’s most-used plastics - polyethylene terephthalate, also known as PET or polyester. The Japanese research team sifted through hundreds of samples of PET pollution before finding a colony of organisms that use the plastic as a food source. Students in Ontario did a study with a filtration system they developed, attaching it to the sewage system to catch the microbeads before they entered the
The concern is are these ideas being developed quick enough? Only 1 in 5 plastic bottles are recycled and water bottles can take between 400 and 1,000 years to decompose. Fishing lines and nets can take up to 600 years to decompose. Plastic pollution in Lake Michigan is approximately the equivalent of 100 Olympic-sized pools full of plastic bottles dumped into the lake every year. One way to help stop plastic pollution is to stop using plastic water bottles, this simple solution would have a huge impact. U.S. and Canada together discard 22 million pounds of plastic into the waters of the Great Lakes each