SA’s beaches flooded by a tidal wave of plastic trash
SA ranked 11th-worst for dumping plastic into oceans, only just behind India
PARADISE TOSSED: A plastic bag spoils the mood on Muizenberg, one of the Western Cape’s most popular beaches LOOKING for a pristine beach this holiday? Don’t bother.
South Africa’s beaches are awash with plastic — as many as 400 items per square metre, according to scientific data due to be released by industry body Plastics South Africa.
And if you think our beaches are better off than elsewhere in the world, think again: South Africa is the 11th worst country for dumping plastics in the ocean, sitting between Bangladesh and India, a separate study has found.
Preliminary findings of an 82beach survey covering most of the coastline from the Western Cape to KwaZulu-Natal suggest you may have more luck collecting polystyrene than seashells this summer at many top holiday destinations, including Cape Town and Durban.
Plastic accounts for well over 90% of beach litter, with plastic packaging items the most common. The most common nonplastic items were cigarette butts and glass.
The three-month survey found an average 13 larger plastic HARD TO SWALLOW: A baby turtle and the plastic contents of its digestive system, bladder and cloaca items (bigger than 1cm) and 723 small plastic pellets per square metre of beach along the coastline.
Other recent studies suggest the problem is even worse than it looks: not only is a large proportion of plastic pollution underwater — either on the ocean floor or suspended in the water — an increasing amount is being eaten by birds and fish.
A snapshot survey this week of the most recent scientific litter studies established that:
Over two-thirds of mullet caught in a sample survey in Durban harbour contained plastic particles, according to a University of KwaZulu-Natal study;
Sixty percent of loggerhead turtles stranded on KwaZuluNatal South Coast beaches this year had swallowed plastic, with roughly a third of those dying as a result of blocked digestive tracts;
Beach litter is much worse around the major urban centres, despite beach-cleaning efforts being greatest there;
The government’s Working for the Coast cleaning effort is just about managing to hold back the tide of large litter items, but there has been a marked increase in small litter items on beaches, such as lids, straws and earbuds;
East London’s Eastern Beach wins the booby prize for South Africa’s dirtiest beach, with 400 plastic items per square metre: 124 polystyrene fragments, 66 bottle lids, 52 earbuds and 39 straws, among a long list of other items;
Your best chance of a plastic-free sand castle is along remote sections of the southern and Eastern Cape coasts;
A comparison of population and litter data in Cape Town showed that over a period when the city’s population grew by 60%, beach litter increased more than threefold;
A greater proportion of submerged litter in the open ocean compared with near-shore areas suggests the plastic pollution crisis might be worse than meets the eye. Floating plastic items are dragged under by marine organisms such as barnacles and seaweed; and
An estimated five to 12 million metric tonnes of plastic enter the ocean every year, and scientists estimate that 99% of the world’s sea birds will have eaten some of it by 2050.
University of Cape Town scientist Peter Ryan, who specialises in marine litter and has conducted national beach surveys since the 1980s, said the country needed a multi-pronged strategy to clean up its act.
“There’s nothing wrong with plastic — the problem is what people do with it,” Ryan said, adding that over half of the country’s solid waste did not go into formal waste streams, compared with just 11% in Brazil.
Other challenges included environmentally unfriendly plastic packaging — such as individual sweet wrappers — and the slow growth of a plastic recycling industry.
“Every time you do one of these [beach litter] surveys you discover a whole new kind of packaging,” Ryan said.
Plastics South Africa sustainability manager John Kieser said the industry was trying to resolve plastic pollution.
“We must stop it getting into the ocean and design material to be recyclable,” Kieser said. “We monitor various sites along the coastline for macro and micro material.”
He said biodegradable or partly biodegradable plastic was expensive and did not address the littering problem.
So-called “bio-material” was also a threat to the recycling industry, which required a consistent grade of product, according to Plastics South Africa.
Department of Environmental Affairs spokesman Zolile Nqayi said the government funded a beach clean-up project and took part in an annual international clean-up campaign.
“We are considering a project to assess the prevalence of microplastics in the marine environment and will consult with experts to refine the scope and purpose of such an investigation,” he said.
Ryan said that all was not lost, however. “It’s a question of making sure that we make the best use of ‘waste’ plastic. It’s a completely solvable problem.” Comment on this: write to tellus@sundaytimes.co.za or SMS us at 33971 www.sundaytimes.co.za