On the coral atoll of Midway in the central Pacific – famous for America’s first victory over the Japanese fleet in World War Two – wildlife experts are facing a new battle against a rising tide of plastic waste.
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Worldwatch.org says: “Factories around the world churned out roughly four trillion plastic bags in 2002.”
Most end up in landfill, taking between 15 and 1,000 years to degrade, or circulating in the environment, killing thousands of animals and causing floods through the clogging of drains.
In 2005, the western Indian state of Maharashtra banned the manufacture, sale and use of all plastic bags, saying they choked drainage systems during monsoon rains. The move came after flooding and landslides killed more than 1,000 people that summer.
A “plastic soup” of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.
The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world’s largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting “soup” stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.
Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” or “trash vortex”, believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday: “The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States.”
According to the UN Environment Programme, plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals. Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food.
Plastic is believed to constitute 90 per cent of all rubbish floating in the oceans. The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic,
Dr Eriksen said the slowly rotating mass of rubbish-laden water poses a risk to human health, too. Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles – the raw materials for the plastic industry – are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. “What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It’s that simple,” said Dr Eriksen.
The solution is a hard one… use less plastic. Not just plastic bags, they make little difference to the plastic crap that is floating around onthe worlds oceans.
Plastic bags are not the problem – It’s all the other types of plastic that we use. From plastic toys to syringes to toothbrushes, crates, buckets.. you name it and it can be found floating around in the ocean!
They should all be made of bio-degradable plastics or recycled/shredded for use in other plastic items or for road aggregate etc.
Just think twice before purchasing a plastic item that could end up in the world’s largest garbage dump.
In a few days time the Canadian seal hunt will begin. And the this time the Canadians are attempting to be more “humane”.
