Our planet Earth is the only planet I know that has so many different living things in/on it. In my studies at school, I learned that the ocean takes up more space than land, and has more living things than land. I also learned that humans do a lot of things which harm the ocean, like putting a lot of waste in the oceans. I could not sleep when I found out about this. I studied a lot after this and found it to be really true. I really thought a lot about the future and how things will look when I become an adult.
I am scared for my future because of the quantity of rubbish in the seas. There is said to be about 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic in the sea. We have to understand that throwing rubbish in the sea harms all sea-life. In my country, Ghana, I like to go to the beach – but it is not clean. I see all kinds of garbage; meaning this garbage will go into the ocean and the fish and all living things there will be in danger. This will lead to other problems.
Dirty water is not what we want to see. I also saw many dirty beaches in other parts of the world online; this is a global issue. It hurts me to see how brown the water is because of human activities in Ghana, and I think we have to do something about it now. Plastic waste is harmful to all sea-life and ocean animals suffer due to our habit of throwing rubbish everywhere. I told my parents that in future I want Ghana to be clean like Singapore, and people should not litter.
We have to change the minds of people to make sure they don’t make the country dirty. It would be nice to not see trash everywhere. We have to keep the environment clean and protect the sea-animals. Ocean animals such as fish eat plastic and other types of waste.  This will cause harm to their bodies. Some of them die and some of them are eaten by their predators, even us humans. Fish is a healthy food for humans but becomes contaminated by plastic waste. We have to do something about this.
What We Can Do
This is a big problem but we can deal with it. We have to change the minds of people, even children, to learn to put rubbish into dustbins. We have to think of the harm we are doing to our water-bodies, animals and ourselves
- Reduce
Decrease the amount of plastic you use every day.
- Reuse
Try your best to reuse the plastic you have in your hand.
- Recycle
Recycle at home, at school at work and everywhere. Take part, you can start at home.
- Donate to organisations or help funds that are helping to clean the ocean.
- We have to ensure companies or people making these plastics pay to help clean up.
- We have to educate people not to litter, or else they can/will be jailed,
- We have to turn plastic waste into some new products.
I am doing this to raise awareness for our future and the ocean. Other people seem to be doing it, but it is not working. I just want a bright future for me and future generations to come.
Please shine light onto our future.
Written by
Tydon Dadzie
TeachinAid School, Ghana
Picture by Lucien Wanda
