(From left) Guterres is seen with conference presidents Fijian Prime Minister Josaia Voreqe Bainimarama and Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lövin at the UN Conference on Oceans in New York last month.
DURING a recent visit to Kuching, I saw a huge pile of plastic rubbish accumulating on what was once a well-kept grass verge. This was no doubt the dastardly work of a ‘fly-tipper’. The Borneo Post article (June 13, 2017) entitled ‘Dumping in Senadin Wetlands sparks outcry’, reported how hundreds of expired yoghurt bottles were found discarded in a beautiful wetland area prompting an investigation. I just wonder worldwide how many people are prosecuted annually for ‘fly-tipping’. Sadly, our oceans are no better.
Last November, a female killer whale was washed ashore on the Isle of Tiree in Western Scotland. ‘Lulu’ was 20 years of age and a member of the last killer whale pod in UK waters.
This pod had been tracked and monitored by marine biologists for 23 years. Lulu had been entangled in fishing lines used to haul lobster pots from the seabed.
The question arose as to why such a powerful mammal did not have the energy to break free from the lines?
A post-mortem examination revealed that she had the highest levels ever recorded of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in her blubber, thus causing adverse health effects. PCBs were developed in the 1930s, when they were widely used as dielectric and coolant fluids in electrical goods such as refrigerators.
This colourless and odourless chemical was found, in 1975, to cause hepatic and respiratory disorders in humans and infertility and deaths in wildlife.
Whales are the top predators of the marine food chain, so it was no surprise that these contaminants are passed higher up the food chain.
These non-biodegradable PCBs and other forms of plastic contaminants have been found as deep as 10km in the Marianas Trench off the Philippines.
Impact on marine ecosystems
Our oceans are probably our greatest resource, covering 71 per cent of the globe but only 1 per cent of the oceans are protected. An estimated 50 to 80 per cent of all life on earth is found under the sea surface with oceans containing 99 per cent of the living space on Earth. Less than 10 per cent of that space has received human exploration. The ‘blooms’ of phytoplankton in our seas absorb 25 per cent of the CO2 emitted into our atmosphere from human activities each year, thereby significantly reducing the impact of greenhouse gases upon our climate. Coastal systems such as salt marshes, seagrass meadows, and mangrove swamps, harbour five times more carbon than that stored in the declining swathes of tropical rainforests. Thus the paramount importance of oceanic ecosystems to us.
In our large-scale, mass consumption, throwaway attitude times, disposal of plastic into our water systems has spread like wildfire from much of the wealthier nations to even the most remote parts of our world. What is the most common material we handle in so many forms on a daily basis? Usually it’s made of plastic varying from shopping counter bags; cigarette lighters; fruit juice, milk, or water containers; to cling film; and microwave cooking dishes. When flying, the interiors of aircraft are clad with the stuff, plastic folding trays, plastic cups, plates, knives, and forks – the list is endless.
Do we ever stop to think where it all ends up beyond the garbage bin? Our blasé approach is conditioned by the cheapness of the product, the actual price of which is determined by the quality and type of plastic.
World Oceans Day
On the penultimate day at the United Nations Ocean Conference on June 8, World Oceans Day was celebrated with a call for action to ensure a healthy and productive ocean for future generations. UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres emphasised the need in “caring for, and using, our oceans in sustainable ways in order to achieve ecological and economic goals for communities everywhere”.
On the same day, at the major Indonesian island resort of Bali, ‘Bye Bye Plastic Bags Bali’ organised 12,000 volunteers to collect 40 tonnes of shoreline garbage. Now the Bali local government intends to ban plastic bags altogether by next year.
Photo shows the carcass of Lulu the killer whale on a Scottish beach last year.
More plastic than fish
In January 2016, at the World Economic Forum’s meeting, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation emphasised that today new plastics consume 5 per cent of all crude oil production. This will increase to 20 per cent within 35 years. Since 1964, plastics production has increased twentyfold and is expected to double again by 2036, and almost quadruple by 2050.
Currently only 5 per cent of plastics are effectively recycled, with 40 per cent dumped in landfill sites (taking up to 1,000 years to break down) and 33 per cent in our oceans. The rest is burned in order to make new plastics.
Annually, at least eight million tonnes of plastic end up in our oceans. This is equivalent to dumping one huge garbage truck’s contents into the sea per minute of our lives. If this wastage and wanton disposal of plastic continues, by 2030 there will be two garbage trucks doing the same each minute.
By 2025, the oceans will see one tonne of plastic waste for every three tonnes of fish and, if not prevented, in 2050 there will be more plastic in the seas than fish. In our warmer tropical seas, a discarded plastic bag will breakdown faster than in temperate waters thereby releasing toxic chemicals to be then digested by fish and eventually humans.
Time to act
Undoubtedly, the plastics industry is failing to address the issue apart from those companies who now produce items made of biodegradable plastic. Bio-plastics are presently more expensive to manufacture than their crude oil based equivalents. It is more expensive to recycle plastic and reprocess its hydrocarbons than to use crude oil for virgin plastic production.
Recently, whilst unpacking some delivered goods, I was mesmerised by the amount of plastic wrapping and polystyrene packing, much of it totally unnecessary. A rethink is needed about our ways of presenting and packing goods using water soluble film for smaller items thus phasing out PVC and expandable polystyrene.
Plastics will remain with us, so the solution to the overall problem may lie in further governmental investment in research to find methods and cost effective processes to produce plastics that are easily composted and efficiently recycled.
Of course we mere mortals can also play our part by not creating plastic litter in streets and not disposing of plastic bottles by throwing them in rivers or leaving them on beaches. We need to ensure that we contribute in this way to society at large and especially to our marine ecosystems. Plastic, in its many forms, has a devilish habit of finding its way into our oceans.
For further information, go to www.plastic-pollution.org and www.unesco.org.