An online video showing plastic waste found in elephant droppings has sparked concern over the extent to which plastic pollution has permeated the globe.<\/p>\n
What’s happening?<\/p>\n
The footage, originally shared by Ishan Shanavas, was captured in the Shola forests of Karnataka’s Brahmagiri Hill in India. The area is a protected animal sanctuary and a “biodiversity hot spot,” according to the Brahmagiri Wildlife Sanctuary’s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n As a protected area, Brahmagiri might be one of the last places that one would expect to find signs of human trash. Unfortunately, that was not the case.<\/p>\n As Shanavas showed in the video, elephant dung found in the area contained large amounts of plastic waste.<\/p>\n “OK, so this is something really disturbing,” Shanavas says in the video, according to NDTV<\/a>. “If you look closely, you can see that there is plastic within the dung \u2026 This is such an alarming sight.”<\/p>\n The finding suggested that the animal that left the droppings had inadvertently consumed plastic waste somewhere within the protected habitat.<\/p>\n Why is it important?<\/p>\n In recent years, researchers have developed a body of evidence indicating that plastic waste has spread to all corners of the world, from the top of Mount Everest to the deepest trenches of the sea.<\/p>\n While much remains to be learned about the impact of this plastic waste on human health and the well-being of natural ecosystems, early findings indicate that plastic pollution poses a variety of problems.<\/p>\n “Discarded improperly, plastic waste pollutes and harms the environment, becoming a widespread driver of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation,” according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature <\/a>and Natural Resources. “It threatens human health, affects food and water safety, burdens economic activities, and contributes to climate change.”<\/p>\n What’s being done about it?<\/p>\n With plastic pollution presenting such a massive, widespread problem, there is no simple solution. However, each of us can take steps every day to help prevent plastic pollution.<\/p>\n For example, by supporting brands with plastic-free packaging<\/a>, choosing plastic-free options for everyday products<\/a>, and knowing your recycling options<\/a>, we can all do our part to reduce plastic waste.<\/p>\n Get TCD’s free newsletters<\/a> for easy tips to save more, waste less, and make smarter choices \u2014 and earn up to $5,000 toward clean upgrades in TCD’s exclusive Rewards Club<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An online video showing plastic waste found in elephant droppings has sparked concern over the extent to which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[190809,190808,49,48,190807,3503,10804,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-468012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-animal-sanctuary","9":"tag-brahmagiri-wildlife-sanctuary","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-ishan-shanavas","13":"tag-online-video","14":"tag-plastic-waste","15":"tag-science","16":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}