PLASTIC WASTE

IMPACT ON ECOSYSTEM

THE World Wildlife Fund (WWF) released its top 10 plastic offenders list in South Africa.

The organisation is calling on the public to reduce their dependence on the use of products made of plastic.

The WWF South Africa said on its website that you were likely to come faceto-face with plastic waste reality on South Africa’s beaches.

According to the WWF website, plastic is a man-made substance, derived primarily from oil and coal.

A relatively small fraction of plastics is made from natural sources, such as sugar-cane residue. The polymers from which plastics are made contain various chemicals to give them the properties they require, such as hardness, strength, density and heat resistance.

The website added that single-use plastics, most common in the food and beverage industry, were typically cheap, produced in bulk and carelessly discarded without being reused or recycled.

Items such as stirrers, spoons and straws, sweet wrappers, disposable cutlery, cups and containers were used once and then thrown away, sometimes within less than half an hour of their use.

A single-use plastic item can last for hundreds of years afterwards.

What is the impact of all this plastic on wildlife?

Marine animals often get entangled in floating plastic or abandoned fishing nets. Large or small plastics such as ropes, balloons, plastic bags and fishing line are also common culprits for painful entanglement.

Many sea creatures also swallow plastics by accident or because they mistake it for food.

Sea birds eat small bits of plastic and turtles can mistake a floating plastic bag for a jellyfish.

The same applies on land where there have been countless instances of pets, farm animals and wildlife eating plastic. These various types of plastic pollutants not only have far-reaching and detrimental effects on the health of our oceans and marine animals, but potentially on human health, too, through the seafood we eat, the effects of which are still being researched.

What can you do?

◆ Consider where you can replace plastic items with better alternatives;

◆ Think twice whether you need an item at all. By all of us using less, the problem becomes more manageable; and

◆ Follow the ‘refuse, reduce, reuse’ mantra and only then should you resort to recycling.