Our oceans are turning into plastic…are we? Long, fascinating yet ultimately “well, duh!” article about the incredible rise in plastic pollution in the oceans and the effects it’s having on wildlife and ultimately our food chain. You get the shock photos like this:
but once you dig into the science it gets really scary.
Moore soon learned that the big, tentacled balls of trash were only the most visible signs of the problem; others were far less obvious, and far more evil. Dragging a fine-meshed net known as a manta trawl, he discovered minuscule pieces of plastic, some barely visible to the eye, swirling like fish food throughout the water. He and his researchers parsed, measured, and sorted their samples and arrived at the following conclusion: By weight, this swath of sea contains six times as much plastic as it does plankton.
What bugs me most of all is this has not really come about from mass dumping by evil corps. It’s been a gradual thing – the odd bag blown, the casually discarded bottle top, a bit of shrink-wrap off a sandwich. We need to stop with the non-essential plastic packaging and now.
Related: half pound of plastic found in bird’s stomach – photos. all via Groc.
The shock photo doesn’t look quite right to me, but that’s beside the point. I have been monitoring the wreck of the Napoli, beached intentionally on the World Heritage Jurassic Coast, and there is a lot happening down there that isn’t being reported in the media. The general public is being conned into believing the entire operation was an accident.
According to the Sidmouth Herald, nine containers remain unaccounted for. A friend of ours has collected a bag full of hyperdermic syrninges after a storm – possibly from a container of medical supplies.
A casual stroll on the beach, even before the Napoli arrived, allowed the collection of a large sack of plastic waste, mostly in the form of bottles and nylon line/rope. The inevitable four or six pack rings are also evident – these are known killers of shore birds. And this is on a beach that few people bother to visit and those that do mostly honor the code.
Plastic recycling just doesn’t happen enough because it’s so darn difficult. We get all the bollocks about how well our councils are doing by recycling paper, green waste, glass, metals etc. but I would rather have these strewn around the place than plastic.
Reducing useless packaging seems to be the only way forward, as these days we appear to have given up on trying to re-educate the masses.
The part of this whole plastic issue that really bothers me (and I am no expert, so I don’t know all the facts — I haven’t made time to really research this properly) is that apparently there exists corn-based, truly biodegradable plastic, but people don’t seem to know about it, and it isn’t in widespread use.
The problem is plastic as we know it has become so bloody pervasive — it’s *everywhere*. So how do we find safer, healthier alternatives?
Kris, the corn-based biodegradable “plastic” bags are a very good alternative but they cost more. It is only environmentally aware companies, such as MEC in Canada, that will use them. Here is a YouTube video that shows what the bag looks like. It biodegrades in 45 days.
It’s not just carrier bags though is it? My eyes have been opened to the problem of kids’ toys. The nipper usually gets charity shop booty from us, but when birthdays and Christmas arrive most folk ply him with new goods. Have you ever tried to remove a cheap (£5) remote control car from its container? ‘In my day’ there was a cardboard box – end of story. Now you have a cardboard outer containing up to three or four inner clear plastic shells. Pointless, thoughtless waste. I’m sure that a creatively-designed carboard box (with folds’n'flaps) could show up the product just as well, and the sodding thing would boidegrade without fancy technology being involved.