What is Pond Water Pollution and how does it effect the environment?
Have you seen a plastic bottle on the side of the road? Have you ever wondered how that piece of plastic reaches places like lakes and oceans? Most people in our community would not care about a little plastic bottle and ignore it. That bottle gets blown into a body of water when it rains or a strong gust. The plastic that goes into the water pollutes it, that is water pollution. Why are plastic items going into your local pond bad? Well, it kills fish and harms them, meaning fewer fish, more stunted small fish, and more pond overgrowth. It also makes the water you might drink less safe with more plastic.
How does water pollution affect your local pond?
Many people fish in ponds and lakes so having plastics hurting and poisoning fish means smaller fish and more sickly fish hurting both the sport of fishing and it hurts the pond ecosystem. Microplastics, which are plastics that have been broken into tiny pieces are known to increase algae growth and pass into a fish's bloodstream. While not a major cause of algae blooms, plastics can help cause an algae bloom by giving algae a surface to anchor to and increase photosynthesis by adsorbing. Algae blooms are bad because they are toxic to lifeforms, block out sunlight, and use up all oxygen in a body of water before dying. This could lead to total loss of aquatic life from the anaerobic conditions of the water.
Steps You Can Take
The easiest step to take is to recycle items used so instead of throwing out that water bottle on the road throw it in the recycle bin and forget about it. Some harder steps but more useful would be reusing your plastic items such as using grocery bags as trash can bags or using empty water bottles and turning them into a makeshift pot for small plants or germanate large seeds such as avocado seeds. There are many ways to reuse plastic and if you're out of ideas, you can go to Youtube and search for how to reuse an item. You can integrate reusable items into nonreusable items such as bringing a metal/reusable water bottle, using a sturdy cloth grocery bag and bringing a metal drinking straw for drinking. These are some of our methods to prevent the buying and subsequent throwing out of cheap plastics that end up in our ponds and lakes.
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Currently, if you live in Far East Aurora, we are hosting a competition to see who recycles the plastic and the neighborhood that wins gets the prize of a party with food and drinks at Bednarcik Junior High.
