ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT… OCEAN PLASTICS
Plastic litter is increasing by an alarming amount and a large part ends up in the sea, damaging the marine environment. Can this tide of destruction ever be reversed?
How we can help reduce the damage to the marine environment
How has this become a growing problem?
As we know, plastic is cheap, versatile and durable – which is why it’s an ideal packaging material. However, all that convenience comes at a price – the world has produced more plastic in the past ten years than the previous 100 years combined, and the majority of this has been in the form of single-use items, such as drinks bottles, plastic bags and food packaging, which are immediately thrown away. In the UK just one third of discarded plastic is recycled, to varying degrees of efficacy. A further 50 per cent is deposited in landfill sites or incinerated, but perhaps most concerning is that the remaining amount is washed into our seas, contributing to the 12 million tonnes of plastic that enters the oceans every year. This is a worldwide problem but it is also very much on our doorstep. The Marine Conservation Society has found an increase in litter of around 140 per cent through its beach surveys since 1994.
How does it end up in the sea?
There are two main ways that the plastic we use lands in our seas and on our beaches. Small items such as plastic bags, disposable cutlery, food wrappers and bottle lids are either dropped as litter or blown out of rubbish bins or landfill sites into rivers, streams and down storm drains, eventually joining the sewage system. This isn’t designed to process them, so they are washed into the sea, where they are eventually broken down into tiny pellets or ‘micro-plastics’. The other source is microbeads, minute plastic particles that are used in toiletries, toothpastes and home-cleaning products. These also go down our drains and into the sewage system, which can’t filter them out so this results in them being deposited in the sea.
What are the consequences?
These ‘ocean plastics’ are being swept by currents, or ‘gyres’, into rubbish ‘patches’. Reports on these vary but some accounts describe areas of debris in the North Pacific that are thousands of miles across. In addition to this, the smaller pieces, such as microbeads and microplastics, spread throughout our oceans, littering our beaches and swallowed by many forms of ocean wildlife. A recent study estimates that 90 per cent of seabirds now have plastic in their stomachs. Deep-sea animals that live 1,830 metres below the surface have also been discovered with it in their systems. As a result the material is working its way into our food chain – when we eat seafood
that has consumed microplastics, for example, trace amounts then end up in our stomachs.
Why is it in the news at the moment?
The Government has pledged to ban microbeads in toiletries by the end of 2017. This has been welcomed by campaigners, but many still feel that the ban, which doesn’t cover microbeads in household products, hasn’t gone far enough. “Marine life doesn’t distinguish between plastic from a face wash and plastic from washing detergent, so the ban should be extended to microplastics in any product that could be flushed down the drain,” says Greenpeace UK senior oceans campaigner Louise Edge.
But aren’t all plastics recyclable?
Most are, but in practice this doesn’t yet translate to a solution. According to the British Plastics Federation, the UK uses more than five million tonnes of plastic each year, of which only an estimated 29 per cent is currently being recovered or recycled. ‘Plastic’ means any ‘mouldable’ material, but now generally refers to synthetic polymers made from oil. The most common domestically recycled ones, PET and HDPE plastics, are collected by 92 per cent of UK councils. However, waste must be sorted carefully, without other mixed plastics in it, to be viable for recycling. And it’s not just here that the recycling loop can break down – many companies that label their products as recyclable don’t actually use the recycled product in their packaging. Notable culprits are soft drinks brands, which obtain less than a tenth of their plastic bottles from recycled sources.
What can be done about it?
The answer lies in a combination of legislation, commercial incentive and consumer awareness. You can reduce your plastic footprint immediately by committing to avoid single-use plastics such as cutlery, straws, bags, singleserving packs and drinks bottles – in the UK we throw away a staggering 16 million of these a day. Strike microbeads from your shopping list, too – product ingredients won’t necessarily say ‘microbeads’, so look for polyethylene (PET), polypropylene (PP) and polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), or check your product on websites such as beatthemicrobead.org. Finally, join in with clean-ups such as The Plastic Movement, an initiative set up by Cornish lifeguards to recycle all the plastic found on the county’s beaches, or the MCS’S annual Great British Beach Clean in September (mcsuk.org). To find out more about beach cleans, go to page 17.