Plastic has become incorporated into our daily lives, however the amount that is produced and carelessly discarded has had a damaging effect on marine life globally. 8 million pieces of plastic enters oceans every single day, which is severely damaging to our marine life. Although plastic is cheap to produce and extremely useful, our planet is suffering from this material that can take hundreds of years to break down into microscopic pieces, which is consumed by marine animals. As plastic is so durable and cheap companies often produce products in mass without a second thought, consumers continue to buy these products and discard them carelessly.

Plastic build up within our oceans is a continuous problem, two-thirds of it comes from land-based sources. Therefore, many of it is litter left behind on beaches, washed down rivers or drains due to litter from towns, litter flushed down the loo and landfill sites near the coast.

Marine life is suffering from the constant plastic that they are consuming, animals often mistake it for food and consume the fatal plastic, causing it to stay in their stomachs and eventually harm the animals. This is extremely damaging to both animals and individuals who consume fish in their diet. The European Food Safety reported a risk to human health and food safety in 2016 as “given the potential for micro-plastic pollution in edible tissues of commercial fish.” Unless there is a decrease in plastic pollution, marine life will continue to consume plastic harming both themselves and individuals consuming UK-caught fish. Due to plastic never truly decomposing, it breaks down into microscopic pieces that tiny marine life such as plankton consume. Once these animals become infected by the plastic, larger animals who eat them as food also are harmed.
Surfers Against Sewage found around:

“100,000 marine mammals and turtles and 1 million sea birds are killed by marine plastic pollution annually.”

These numbers are extremely high due to millions of pieces of plastic entering the ocean daily. It was also found that plastic was found in “100% of marine turtles, 59% of whales, 36% of seals and 40% of seabird species examined.” These species are slowly becoming endangered, marine life could be helped if plastic was continuously cleared from seaside areas and individuals took more care when recycling and disposing of these products. Large companies such as Coco-Cola are also a main contributor towards the plastic waste as over 150 plastic bottles are found littering each mile of UK Beaches. Well-known corporations and businesses can contribute towards reducing plastic pollution by cutting down their use of plastic, for example removing single use plastic bags, plastic straws and plastic cups. Each of these items if switched to environmentally friendly material but companies globally, plastic pollution will reduce.

Beach clean ups is one-way local communities can help towards clearing beaches and the ocean of unwanted plastic pollution. Bournemouth is one area that has regular beach clean ups with over 500 volunteers helping in 2018. They were able to clear 350 bags of rubbish from Dorset’s beaches. These locals were able to host 17 beach clean ups, along Dorset coast from April 21st to 22nd. This is one method in the right direction, regular clean ups alongside stricter regulations on UK beaches can help to cut down on plastic pollution in the ocean.

Written by: Tasnim Islam

Plastic pollution is one contributing factor towards the damage caused to marine life. It makes up around 60 to 90% of all marine debris, this number of plastic does not decompose and therefore is being consumed by sea animals. Plastic is constantly being created for products that consumers buy due to its convenience for example the use of straws, plastic water bottles and single use plastic bags. Annually 100 million tons of plastic is created globally and 25 million tons of this is disposed into the environment. The continuous use of single use plastic products contributes towards plastic pollution as they are used once and will never decompose. Recycling plastic is an efficient way to not waste plastic however it does not cut down on plastic, it is simply remodelling it.

Consumerism alongside the growth in population and urbanization contributes towards the increase in plastic pollution. Companies continuously produce products using plastic as it is extremely cheap and therefore they can keep up with the demands of consumers.

This artefact produced by the BBC, shows the number of single use plastic that turns to waste. Products such as wet wipes, plastic bottles and plastic packets are discarded on UK beaches which eventually pollutes the ocean. It is impossible to know where all plastic originates from, however the BBC also found that the public contribute around 30% towards plastic pollution found in oceans. Items flushed down the loo, which should have been disposed of correctly amounted to 8.5% of the pollution.

The Marine Conservation Society found, “718 pieces of litter for every 100m stretch of beach surveyed during their recent Great British Beach Clean Up.”

Ground water pollution and land pollution are also damaging to the planet, which is caused by plastic waste. Once plastic pollution seeps into the world’s water it becomes extremely damaging to the environment and humans as it could be found in drinking water. Often when there is heavy wind and rain stray pieces of plastic get washed into water reservoirs, oceans and drains which adds to the decrease of water quality and an increase in pollution to oceans. Most of these toxic fluids come from the large amount of plastic waste dumped into landfills. Once these harmful chemicals enter the ground they begin to decrease the planet’s water quality and could put those who drink it at risk. The plastic pollution is also unable to be burnt, to decrease the waste, as it releases harmful chemicals into the environment.

Plastic pollution is only one growing problem that needs to be prevented in order to improve our environment. The government alongside corporate companies who constantly produce products using plastics need to make drastic changes in order to help our marine life and our planet, before it’s too late.

Written by: Tasnim Islam

 

I – “L’Affaire du siècle” (The Case of the century)

As Rick Stafford highlights, plastic pollution is only a part of the problem that we face today. It is one of the reasons why we currently face a huge environmental crisis : climate change.

Something incredible is happening in France : 4 NGO published a petition to attack the French State.

Notre Affaire à Tous (Everybody’s concern)), la Foundation pour la Nature et l’Homme (Nature and Mankind Foundation), Greenpeace France and Oxfam France joined forces to call on the French government about its inaction on the climate matter, aka for failure to fulfil its obligations. As a matter of fact, France committed to make important change in its action for the environment and climate change. Among those : the Paris Agreement, for which France was a leader. According to this agreement, France was supposed to reduce its CO2 emission to 2%. But in 2018, the country failed to his objective by 6% ! Not a great success for a country that wants to “Make our planet great again”, and be a figurehead for a positive change.

The online petition was published on December 17th and in less than 48H, it gathered 1 million signatures ! On January the 3rd, 1.9 million people had signed the online document.

A YouTube video featuring famous French people – such as Marion Cottillard, Juliette Binoche, Elie Semoun, Shaka Ponk and many others – was relayed on social media.

This kind of action is not unprecedented : French people are not the only ones attacking their government in justice.

Other citizen of various nationalities took action too : in Pakistan a farmer named Ashag Leghari went to trial against his government in 2015. He accused it to not do anything against the climate change that affects food and water supply. He asked the judges to defend the right to a decent life and human dignity written in the Constitution. Ashag won the trial, and the creation of a Climate Change Commission inside the government was ordered.

Another example is Columbia in 2018. 25 citizens and the NGO DeJusticia attacked the State to save the Amazon Forest. They won, and the Columbian Supreme Court gave ( months to the government to put a plan together in order to stop deforestation.

Again, in the United States of America in 2015, about twenty teenagers went to an Oregon courthouse wanting to significantly decrease the CO2 emissions. In may 2018, 10 European families attacked the European Union in justice to call it on its lack of action in favour of regulating climate change.

Dutch people  also took action  against Netherland, and won. The country was condemned to reduce its gas emission by 25% instead of the 17% intended by its government.

What is unprecedented however is the magnitude of this action. Netherland won, with one NGO called Urgenda and the support of 900 Dutch people.

France has way more supporters, the question is now : will that be effective?

II – A map of Uk’s plastic trash

In 2018, the charity Plastic Tide put online an interactive map, meant to localize plastic trash on UK’s beaches.

For that, the charity took drones pictures of the coast, and is asking the public to help by tagging the kind of plastic detritus they see.

The plastic trash found is divided in four categories :

Toxic

Far Travellers

Weird

Common

You can access this map by clicking here.

III – A worldwide map of the plastic trash’s journey in the ocean

The oceans and seas represent 70% of the Earth’s surface. This added to the meteorological conditions and marines currents allow the plastic to travel quite far from the place it was released into the ocean.

It is well-known that plastic pollution is a problem, with its invasion of the oceans. It has gotten to the point that the Ellen MacArthur Foundation revealed in a study that in 2050, there could be more plastic than fishes in the oceans (in terms of weight) ! Actually, the equivalent of one garbage truck is dumped into the ocean every minute that goes by. This number could rise to two garbage trucks per minute in 2030, and even four in 2050 !

It is difficult to imagine the journey a plastic detritus can make. Erik van Sebille, a researcher of the Utrecht University, specialised in the study of the worldwide circulation of the ocean and its effect on climate change tried to answer this interrogation. He created a statistical map to help visualize the itinerary a single plastic garbage can follow when dumped in the sea.

Here we can see that a plastic detritus originating from the south coast of England could spread all the way to central America in 4 years and six months, covering a wide surface due to its decomposition into microparticules. And we know plastic can take a thousand year to decompose, so it has to time to spread all over the ocean in a global scale!

To access the map (click here)

Here is some extra footage of waves of rubbish floating in Caribbean Sea.

Greenpeace Bournemouth & Poole Beach Clean 2017

 

Written by: Zoe Mosset-Raby

 

Sources:

David Wilkes, 2018. [photograph]. London: DMG Media. Available from:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5250721/True-scale-Britains-hidden-plastic-horror-exposed.html  [Accessed 03/01/2019].

I – Local awareness – Dorset’s Jurassic Coast

Being an island, England has a major interest in the matter of plastic pollution. Coastal areas are directly concerned by the plastic problem, so they are aware of it. Municipalities organize clean ups to protect the coasts and keep their landscape clean to attract tourists. But it’s not a hundred percent efficient,as a lot of other areas are not covered. And sea side needs a constant attention that can’t always be possible since detritus constantly wash ashore. In consequence, environment friendly people volunteer to clean up the beaches and sea side as well.

Since 2014, the non profit organization that goes by the name #2minutebeachclean tries to make progress on the coast plastic pollution problem. The principle is simple : 2 minutes is nothing. But if people consecrate those 2 minutes per day to collect trash by the seaside, it can make a change. At the origin, it was localized in England. Since then, it became worldwide, as people from all across the world have gotten involved.

Just recently on December 31th 2018,  Steve Trewhella (wildlife photographer and author, involved in the protection of the environment) reunited 12 others people to organize a detritus collection. In one day, they picked-up a thousand kilos of trash at Lulworth Cove, on the Jurassic Coast in Dorset.

Plastic trash don’t spare any coast, everything gets polluted whether it’s wild coast or touristic beaches. The problem in the case of Lulworth Cove, in addition to the visual problem and the pollution of the coast, is that this is a world’s heritage site, and is registered as a UNESCO protected site. Furthermore, it has a very important wildlife and flora. And among the trash collected, there were oil drums. If their content had leaked, it could have had serious consequences on the area ecosystem.

In the beginning of January 2018, the Eleanor storm raised once again awareness on plastic pollution. The consequence of this meteorological event was to find the plastic trash in the UK water wash ashore. Beaches and coastal areas found themselves covered in trash, most of it being plastic. While it was hidden in the sea for no one to see it, the storm brought to attention that even though you can’t see a problem, it doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t exists.

II – Global awareness – The European Commission wants to fight plastic pollution

In January 2018, the European Commission announced the launch of a global strategy to protect the planet from plastic pollution. May the 10th 2018, new rules were proposed to reduce the presence of the 10 most commonly found plastic trash in the oceans.

This decision comes from the fact it is now well known that the oceans are polluted. The numbers are obviously alarming. The 7th continent speaks for itself ! Ocean CleanUp revealed in march 2018 that it is now 1.6 millions square meters, and is made of 80 000 tons of plastic trash.

At a global scale, ocean trash are 85% plastic, among which 27% are fishing equipment’s. As for the way those garbage came to be there, ⅘ of it comes from land. It is thrown on land and then carried by water streams to the oceans. The ⅕ left was thrown directly into the water. An even more alarming fact is that every second, 250 kg of plastic is being poured in the sea.

This situation is now a major concern for the European Commission, which role is to submit bills to the Council of the European Union and to European Parliament. And also to watch after the application of the laws.

Some actions were instilled to limit the plastic pollution of the ocean, and to bring awareness to the public, without flagrant success. This is the reason why the European Commission wishes to make this a priority.

In 2015, France prohibited the use of single use plastic bags. In the UK, a 5p charge was established (with the effect of its sales dropping by 86% !).  Plastic has an awful impact on the environment, but animals suffer from it too : sea animals swallow it, and get trapped in it. If nothing is done, there will be more plastic than fishes in the oceans in 2050.

The humongous quantities of plastic thrown in the sea doesn’t seem to be match by the ones we see. There is a reason to it : according to Alexandra Ter Halle, researcher at the Toulouse III University, plastic disintegrate itself in thousands of microscopic particles. These particles liberate toxic materials, and can be found anywhere related to sea life : in the water, in the animals that eat it, and thus inside our food ! Plastic pollution is not just an environmental issue, but also a health one.

The European Commission wants to forbid the ten plastic trash most found in the ocean :

Cotton buds

Cutlery

 Dishes

Straws

Swizzle sticks

Bottles

Balloons

Bags and wrapping

Cigarette butts

Food containers

These products will be prohibited, as they can easily be replaced by eco-friendly alternatives. Another objective of the European Commission is to recycle 90% of the plastic bottles in EU by 2025.

But before the setting up of these measures, they have to be validated by the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament. In order to make concrete actions before the European Elections in may 2019, when the new European congressman will be elected.

Written by: Zoe Mosset-Raby

We interviewed marine biologist and professor at Bournemouth University, Rick Stafford. On his recent articles released for The Guardian, The Conversation among his multiple interviews in newspapers and radio for publications such as Nature, Radio Solent and Bournemouth Echo.

Having a discussion with Mr Stafford about his work in The Guardian, “Reusable coffee cups are just a drop in the ocean for efforts to save our seas“. As well as The Conversation article, “Plastic Pollution: seaside communities coming together will save us – not technology“. When asked what originally persuaded him to write the research and the articles

Rick explains, he was asked initially to write the article for the conversation, partially from twitter, after viewing tweets and articles from coral reef biologist Terry Hughes. His work includes bleaching of the coral reefs in Australia. Hughes often writes about dredging and mining cole and its effects on the great barrier reef and marine life. Hughes focuses on technologically solutions and argues that its actually about stopping the amount of carbon we use. Explaining he had never seen a plastic straw o the great barrier reef and how we need to get back to discussing the real issues.

“When I was asked i thought I would put some of that in, because it isn’t the biggest issue”

The other reason for the article was that of Peter Jones, after Rick contacted him asking if he could include some of his tweets within the article it resulted in a collaboration. Rick further explains that plastic pollution is not the biggest issue, lots of people are becoming distracted and given the idea that there is nothing wrong with it. Grabbing his reusable coffee cup, “we are still buying loads and loads of plastic” “although there is nothing wrong with it, it is not solving the problem and pushing the problem back to people”. The conversation article discussed a technological solution “people want to innovate there way out of everything”. We may be able to, to some extent with plastic pollution but not with climate change as a whole. The real big issue is we as a society need to stop using so much carbon. It is not an big of an issue, being used by governments and companies, creating the image that they have charged for plastic bags and got rid of straws. Showing that they are putting something in place when this is just the tip of an issue.

Technological investments like The Ocean Clean up, invented by a 22-year-old who raised £30 million pounds to create his new innovative to clean up our oceans (below).

In actual fact its much larger. Its not addressing the route cause which is over consumption.

“Population of 7 billion (2016), 320 million tons of plastic. Approximately 8 million pieces make there way to the ocean daily.”

Compared to 69% of fish stocks worldwide are either over/ fully exploited. This is in accordance to our over consumption and the markets needs for fish stock.

Do you think the little legislation that has been put in place has changed/ will change attitudes? Rick: I don’t think changing attitudes, I think there is evidence that fewer bags are in the ocean and fewer bags are being purchased, there is a demonstrable effect. He delves further by saying he doesn’t think its changing attitudes, it doesn’t make individuals environmental aware. They are a law, so one myst then abide by them and it must in turn help the environment. The underlying driver is a term called neo-liberalism:

“Refers to an economic system in which the “free” market is extended to every part of our public and personal worlds”

All down to markets and individuals and why we consume and how we consume. Everything from tuition fees to products in supermarkets. “We are not going to get environmental change quick enough”.

The Government are currently hot on appearing to reduce the use of single-use plastic and eventually banning straws, drink stirrers and plastic-stemmed cotton buds. Currently banning free plastic bags and creating a 5p carrier bag charge, as well as the influence to increase the use of energy efficient light bulbs among many other small individual moves. These little factors really are not making much of a difference explains Rick,

“They are more energy efficient but in terms of net gain we are past that with climate change.”

Our government is not stepping up to the plate and changing policy, Rick explains that climate change and plastic is one perspective of the issue. Both raw materials of these are oil. Oil it a massive industry and largely political. The companies don’t want to have an effect on big business, and the idea of economic growth. Instead we should have a much fairer economy and system if we don’t worry about large businesses.

As well as plastic pollution and climate change, Rick mentions often about the other issues which our effecting our environment. Mentioning factors of over-fishing and how detrimental it truly is. The focus is being forced on plastic pollution. Out government and industries are making small changes and appearing to have a larger effect, looking like they have a much larger impact than they really do.

In regards to overfishing and changing our consumption patterns. Articles out there say one flight across the atlantic and back are our entire carbon footprint for the year, not body is willing to address that explains Rick. If we switch to a corn starch coffee cup, it looks like we are doing more for the environment. It is tangible to see, Blue Planet, obviously portraying plastic pollution, more so than other climate change and over-fishing we cannot see these effects. It is easier to make small changes that larger ones, people are prepared to make small consumer driven changes, refill bottle and coffee cups. In other articles its discussed that items such as reusable cups are highly instagramable, gaining gratification and one is viewed as doing something for the environment.

Rick discusses that it is important for organisations and communities making a change, knowing the scientific evidence, recycling does not make that much of a difference, most of it gets chucked out because its contaminated. The waste is the shipped of to a developing country and put into landfill. If everyone did beach cleans and stopped putting plastic in the ocean now, we could have a cleaner ocean, alot would also be broken down into micro plastics.  Rather than just doing these elements we need to have some sort of message, its the over consumption that is the issue. Making small laws is not going to get rid of such an issue but is scalable action. This could then be replicated across the country. Its about doing something like a beach clean and make it replicable and spreading it. It is about driving major change and not smaller issues.

Rick also mentioned ‘Distinction rebellion’, the group stop traffic and demonstrate peaceful demonstrations to get people attention on climate change. Looking at the process of top down and not individual action. If everyone doesn’t do there bits its not enough, changing elements that people don’t want to change.

We asked can Versova beach be replicated? Rick explains that there is a culture in places which have had recent development, Asian countries just do not have the infrastructure to deal with plastics and other waste, so it is now washing up on our beaches. It is more about dealing with the cause of these issues rather than the consequences. Plenty of beach cleans, and there is nothing wrong with these individual actions but we need to also look at much larger ones. It is again this ‘top down’ theory. We need to find where its coming from or we will be cleaning it forever, deal with the underlining problem. A major factor is that of convenience and fast food, without this we would have much less waste and plastic. People are not willing to give these habits up.

Another recent issue within society are palm oil, there was no pressure for Iceland to change their sources. It does not quiet work, only works for the business model Rick explains. Palm oil is incredibly efficient in terms of oil to the land. You would clear 3x as much land if you were to change the oil. It is mainly in convenience food as a preservative, if we get rid of it palm oil usage would be reduced. Where do we draw the line in legislation?

“We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN”

Lastly we asked, do you think society will become desensitised? Rick thinks that was the first time we became really embedded in the consciousness for these topics. I think thats why there has been such a surge in this ordeal of plastic pollution, being encouraged because it hides the bigger environmental issues we face. Over time people will become desensitised if we can solve the plastic issue, then great. What does not happen is the evidence for these little changes making a big impact. Instead we are concentrating on one factor at a time.

Written by: Natalie White