Humans produce millions of tons plastic waste every year, but where does it end up?

A study has found plastic debris in a surprising location, trapped in sea ice. Increasing ice melt due to climate change in recent years will not only turn the freezing north and south poles of our earth into water pools, but also release a flood of floating plastic waste into the sea.

A photo taken by a French man Fabrice Gueria shows a shocking image of a polar bear, hungry and alone, trying to eat a plastic trash bag found floating in the Arctic. The animal lifts the bag from the water in its mouth and tears at it helplessly with its paws and teeth. The photographer took the image while visiting the Arctic Archipeligo of Svalbard in Norway.

He watched the polar bear hunting for food for at least four hours before giving up and chewing on the plastic bag. As we all know, polar bears rely almost exclusively on fat-rich seals as food, which are most efficiently hunted from the surface of sea ice. The fast decreasing of sea ice is surely reducing polar bears’ access to the prey.

The photo is highlighting the problem of ice melting and plastic waste as an estimated 9 million tons a year chokes sea life and winds up on shores around the world. With the annual increase of polar temperature, even higher concentration of plastic originally trapped in polar ice will be released in the future.

Since most of the wastes are not bio-degradable, a lot of animals like polar bears, turtles, birds and sperm whales swallow them. If ice loss cannot be curbed, it will eventually cause the extinction of these animals in the world.