A ‘bank’ of wet wipes
COMMENT
A PICTURESQUE spot near Hammersmith Bridge saw a record number of wet wipes removed from the banks of the Thames.
Volunteers collected more than 115,000 non-biogradeable wipes from the banks of the river at Barnes, south west London, last year. In one session 5,500 were collected by “citizen scientists” in a two-hour clean-up last May – the highest recorded in one day.
The wipes drop to the riverbed and collect at bends where the current slows, with a “massive” build-up also at Putney, Battersea, Isleworth and Vauxhall.
Thames21 volunteers also collected piles of plastic bottles from the foreshore at nearby Fulham, close to the famous Craven Cottage football ground, right. I THINK it’s safe to say that we live in a throwaway society – with everything readily available for our convenience, including single use-plastic straws, coffee cups and plastic water bottles.
It has become the norm to use something for a few minutes and throw it away without a second thought.
But what if we think about how much energy and raw materials were involved in making a single-use product?
And it then ends up in landfill or dropped on the ground in streets, parks or our coastlines.
It is estimated that 80 per cent of litter in our oceans and beaches comes from inland sources, which is then washed down to the ocean.
The two main problems with litter for our marine wildlife are entanglement and ingestion.
Entanglement can cause cuts and even strangulation to marine wildlife, which can ultimately lead to their death.
Accidental ingestion of these plastic items can also be deadly. Plastic will sit in the stomachs of marine wildlife, which obstructs real food to be digested and can lead to starvation.
Therefore it’s not surprising that stranded marine life found on beaches can have huge amounts of plastic in their stomachs.
Plastic breaks down into microplastics. Studies are even finding them in phytoplankton, the base of the entire ocean food chain.
These plastic items accumulate and pass through the food chain, which can reach our diet.
At the Marine Conservation Society we wanted to find out whether litter was getting better or worse on our beaches.
So we started a programme called Beachwatch in 1994. It is a citizen science programme asking volunteers to run a beach clean and then complete our survey forms to record and send us the data. That data has allowed us to push for change.
It was used as supporting evidence by the Government to introduce the 5p carrier bag charge.
Since the first levy was introduced in 2011 we have seen an almost 50 per cent decrease in the number of plastic bags on our beaches. It is vital that we all do our bit to reduce the amount of single-use plastic we use. And it is vital that manufacturers think about the whole life cycle of a product and ensure it is recyclable.
The policy must be implemented to reduce the plastic being used to ensure better recycling of these items.