After finding out that the New York Times recently published another article about marine plastics, I was excited to read it and write a blog post on it with our class’s critiques of the last article we read together in mind.
The last New York Times article we read in class was very sensational. It did an excellent job of creating unrealistic imagery of plastic islands and it did an even better job of hyping the uneducated public up about marine plastic. The article’s two main flaws were that it did not present quantifiable data, and it also did not offer any prospective solutions for the problem being presented. The article created the hype but failed to propose any proper way for our society to deal with the marine plastics problem.
John Schwartz’s article, “Study Gauges Plastic Levels in Oceans,” covered all of the bases that the previous article we read together failed to address. Aside from being compelling and journalistically well-written, Schwartz’s article practically opened itself by throwing out numbers that helped quantify how bad the marine plastics problem has become. I liked the way he listed an approximate number of plastic pieces found with their corresponding weight. As we discussed in class, just knowing the amount of pieces alone or the weight of pieces alone is not enough information to get a well-rounded picture of the data.
After quantifying the study, the article went on to explain the categories of plastic that are found the most in our oceans. It even pointed out that although fishing supplies is our most abundant perpetrator, putting laws into effect to stop those plastics from entering our oceans are not enough because those laws would not take into consideration all of the other categories of plastic that wind up in our waters. However, the article did a great job of starting off with suggestions to fix the problem.
The article continues to suggest plans of action when it recommends that producers stop using small plastic beads in their beauty products and that companies should be held accountable for the plastic they put into the environment.
One part of the article that I appreciated was how it spoke about micro plastics and reminded us that an even bigger part of our problem is not just plastics we see at the surface. The article also did a great job of describing the harmful effects of plastic in a marine ecosystem.
Overall, I enjoyed comparing the two articles and being able to use the skills we learned in class to be a more critical reader.
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