Josh Martin
The world needs to clean up its act
New Zealand is home to some stunning beaches – made all the better because nearly all lack the crowds that swarm every inlet and bay of Europe. However, even the sweeping dunes of Aotearoa cannot be saved from the rubbish polluting the oceans at an alarming rate.
While you might have scoffed and blamed locals or tourist hordes when you saw a dirty beach in Bali, we’ll all be mortified to find hundreds of scrappy supermarket bags and bottles in the waters off Kaiteriteri and Whangamata¯ .
A landmark United Nations report has identified plastic pollution as one of the major health risks to the world.
New Zealand is isolated, but it’s not that isolated. Currents will increasingly bring to our shores some of the eight million tonnes of plastic that ends up in the sea annually, choking sea life along the way.
The sixth Global Environment Outlook from the United Nations was compiled by 250 scientists from more than 200 nations and identified ocean plastics as a menace because they can ‘‘act as a vector for the transport of invasive species and other pollutants’’ (not good news for those admirably nitpicky staffers at NZ Customs).
That’s not to mention the obvious ecological impact to sea life being entangled in them or ingesting them.
Yes, we’ve known that for a while, seen the photos of turtles struggling to survive in their plastic six-pack beer-holder costumes, the seahorse wrapping its tail around an earbud with eerie familiarity, the photos of the dead whale who ingested an aisle full of thrown-away plastic.
But what really made the world sit up and take notice – and what the UN report fails to mention – was the annoyed tourist factor. Foreign beach holiday selfies and GoPro underwater action shots ruined by an incoming tide of wayward green supermarket bags floating into frame.
A ‘‘floating garbage patch’’ the size of Texas in the north-west Pacific Ocean could be ignored. A few old water bottles ruining my snorkelling trip in Thailand might be put down to poor national park management. But an increasing number of foreign plastic objects rolling into ‘‘100% Pure New Zealand’’? That will be an outrage – by which time it’ll be too late to do anything about it.
An inter-governmental solution to the ocean plastics problem is barely progressing. Pump bottles are biodegrading at a faster rate. We saw the furore over something as simple as a plastic bag levy in New Zealand, multiply that by 200-odd nations and you’ll see why it’s hard to kick the habit.
Plastic has excelled for decades as a packaging device because it indulges us in our love of convenience without being expensive (‘‘throwaway’’ never existed before Styrofoam). It’s a symbol of colourful, practical consumerism accessible to all, and that suits the tourism and travel industries to a tee (plastic everything, to be swiftly and cheaply replaced for the next guest tomorrow).
But now the opposing tourist desires of convenience (assisted by plastic) and aesthetic (ruined by plastic) are butting up against each other.
It’s a tough habit to kick and travel companies and individual tourists will need to do more than just shunning straws and spoons if we’re to avoid drowning in plastic.