This petition was established by a 3rd grader and his mom who believe as a coastal state, Georgia must do it's part to show we care about the protection and preservation of our oceans!

Everyone knows that our oceans are full of garbage. While there are no current figures of exactly how much garbage is floating in our oceans, the National Academy of Sciences estimated in 1975 that around 14 billion pounds of garbage are added each year. Aside from just looking disgusting, all of this garbage poses a serious threat to wildlife who either confuse it as food or ingest it accidentally.

In 2018, a study was published in Marine Pollution Bulletin about the impacts of plastics entering whales' diets. As plastic cannot be digested, it sits in the stomach without being able to go anywhere. Eventually, the digestive tract becomes blocked. Not only is the whale unable to clear this blockage, but it is also unable to eat any real food as well. Thus, the researchers found that starvation and gastric rupture ultimately kill the whale.

A 2012 study showed that turtles do not eat ocean garbage indiscriminately and prefer buoyant plastics over other forms of ocean litter, including balloons and translucent materials that could resemble jellyfish. Much of this gets lodged in the turtle’s throat, causing it to die from suffocation.

Aside from just eating the garbage, marine debris puts animals at risk through entanglement from old fishing lines and abandoned nets. Animals are in danger from being caught on things like 6-pack rings, which can cut off circulation or airways as the animal grows. 

It is hard to estimate exactly how many animals are affected by plastic in the oceans each year, though some have put the number as high as 100,000. While some groups are experimenting with large-scale devices to reduce the amount of marine debris, there currently isn’t anything in place. Until this desperately-needed solution comes, it is on all of us to reduce the amount of litter generated so that it does not end up in the mouths or around the necks of marine wildlife living along the Atlantic Coast of Georgia and the Gulf Coast of Florida and Alabama.

By taking action against the distribution of plastic beverage yokes, you would help save the lives of God's beautiful creatures and would be taking a major step in the preservation of our beaches and oceans for generations to come.

Keep Georgia peachy clean!