Earth’s plastic nightmare
It’s cheap and versatile but it’s choking our planet – and millions of tons are ending up in our fragile oceans
DO YOU remember the first time you drank through a straw as a kid? Probably not – but our planet is unlikely to have forgotten.
That straw is probably still somewhere on our precious planet – either underground, in a landfill or floating on a growing island of trash on the ocean.
In other words, a plastic trail has been following you all your life.
We’ve all grown up with plastic – it’s affordable and versatile and can be moulded into all sorts of products: bags, containers, furniture, bottles, jewellery, you name it.
But it doesn’t disappear – ever. Over decades it can break up into smaller parts but it never goes away.
Every minute about one million plastic bottles are sold worldwide and five to 13 million tons of plastic find their way into our oceans annually, The Guardian reports. But there’s good news: now that our planet is suffocating under the weight of discarded plastic the fight to stem the toxic tide is on.
Last month the European Union (EU) announced a new strategy against plastic pollution in Brussels, Belgium. Several of the steps include ensuring that by 2030 all plastic packaging in Europe will be recyclable and reusable.
Large corporations and businesses are also joining the fight. British supermarket chain Iceland recently announced it would be replacing plastic packaging with, among other things, containers made from biodegradable wood pulp.
Fast-food giant McDonald’s has set itself the target of using only environmentally friendly packaging in all its franchises by 2025.
The fight is on in South Africa too. Seafood franchise Ocean Basket is no longer providing straws with drinks or plastic bags with takeaways. Restaurant chain John Dory’s has stopped handing out balloons to children and is also banning plastic straws.
But using less plastic is a monumental challenge.
Over decades it can break up into parts but it never goes away
“Domestic production alone reached almost 1,5 million tons in 2015 – and this doesn’t include imported plastic products,” says John Duncan, senior manager of the marine conservation programme of the World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF). Research carried out by the WWF shows most of the rubbish found on SA beaches is plastic – mostly earbuds, straws, bottle caps, sweet wrappers, plastic cutlery and shopping bags.
“The wind blows it into the ocean from inland dumping grounds or it finds its way to the sea via rivers,” Duncan says.
The problem with plastic is it never breaks down completely, says Hayley McLellan, environmental campaign manager at the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town. Once it’s in the ocean it stays there.
“We’re increasingly finding plastic in the food chain of every marine ecosystem. Urgent steps are needed to mitigate this,” Duncan says.
As Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the European Commission, said, “If we don’t do anything about it, we’ll end up choking on plastic.”
IMPACT ON NATURE
In 2010 American researchers found that Earth’s oceans contained an estimated 4,8 to 12,7 megatons of plastic.
Last year National Geographic reported a second floating trash island – containing particles as fine as confetti – had been found in the South Pacific off the coast of Chile and Peru. The island measured around 2,5 million km2 – an area twice the size of SA.
This follows the discovery in 1997 of a similar trash island, often referred to as the Pacific trash vortex.
Henderson Island, an uninhabited island in the South Pacific and a Unesco World Heritage Site, was recently labelled the land mass worst affected by plastic pollution.
By 2015 about 38 million pieces of plastic had washed up on the island, National Geographic reports.
“We know there’s a lot of plastic on the ocean bed but we don’t know exactly how much. Plastic is also trapped between the surface and the ocean bed but it’s hard to measure,” says Professor Peter Ryan of the Marine Research Institute at the University of Cape Town (UCT).
According to Duncan, about 700 species of marine animals are affected by plastic pollution.
“Entanglement of species by marine debris can cause starvation, suffocation, laceration, infection, reduced reproductive success and mortality,” he says, adding that animals such as turtles often die from ingesting plastic.
Ryan explains that a bird with a stomach half-full of plastic isn’t able to eat enough food to survive.
Plastic isn’t just a problem in the ocean, says Professor Henk Bouwman, a zoologist and lecturer at North-West University’s School of Environmental Sciences and Development.
Making it all the more sinister is the fact the extent of the damage is unknown. “We know a fair bit about plastic in the ocean. We know a great deal less about plastic in fresh water and even less about plastic in soil, food and the air.”