- Plastic Trash washed up on Pacific Island - Angelo Villagomez at Marine PhotoBank
Plastics are part of everyday life, how we ever existed without them is mystery but not much more than 60 years ago, we did just that. Although many of us can’t remember a time before the world was literally awash with plastic products, these complex and highly useful polymers have been part of our life for a relatively short period of time. But in that time our increasingly disposable society has caused plastic to be one more nail in the coffin of ocean health. The United Nations estimates that around a 100,000 marine mammals and turtles and one million sea birds are killed each year due to plastics pollution. There is no known estimate for other marine creatures that accidentally ingest deadly plastic, or become entangled. It is an issue that is becoming more prominent as we learn just how damaging plastic really is.
Its estimated that globally, we use an astonishing 300 million tonnes of plastic each year. Think how many plastic bags and packaging you go through in a week, and that 300 million tonnes isn’t so incredible after all. And a large proportion of this ends up in the seas of the world. Over the last two decades, there have been hundreds of cases of whales, dolphins and porpoises that have been killed or injured by marine litter plastics. The entanglement of marine life in fishing gear has been long identified as a serious risk to marine mammals, but now it seems that plastic ingestion is also being revealed as a severe threat to populations.
Whales Killed By Plastic
The International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting at Jersey last year, heard that in 2008 two sperm whales were found stranded on the coast of California. After autopsy, they were found to have an enormous amount of debris (fishing nets and other synthetics) in their stomachs (around 205 kilos in one of the animals). One of the whales had a ruptured stomach whilst the other appeared to have starved due to a plug of plastic blocking its gut, rendering it unable to feed. In France, a dead minke whale was found with a tonne of plastic in its stomach, including plastic bags from British supermarkets. It isn’t just marine mammals that are suffering heavy casualties; sea birds and a range of other marine fauna have been found entangled and drowned, or dead from plastic ingestion.
According to the UKs Marine Conservation Society (MCS), seabirds mistake floating plastic litter for food, and over 90% of fulmars found dead around the North Sea have plastic in their stomachs. And it is not just the larger marine life that is effected say scientists. Studies at the university of Plymouth are looking at how smaller invertebrate ingest plastic, causing blockages in their digestive tracts as well as the toxic effects of so much plastic ingestion.
Scientists agree that plastics pollution is a threat to marine life, but how widespread it is, remains unclear. Many stranded or dead whales are not recorded in many parts of the world let alone any investigations of gut contents. To compound this, cetaceans that die from being caught in fishing gear probably end up on the ocean floor invisible to any studies trying to estimate fatalities due to plastics.
Plastic In The Deep Sea
A recent study in the prestigious journal Science, says that despite plastic waste significantly increasing over last 20 years, the amount found in ocean remains static. It is a puzzle, say the authors. They do not know where the additional plastic is ending up. Plastic breaks up in the ocean, 88% of the plastic particles found were less than 10 mm in size, it may be, they say, that it is too small to be detected by collection. We currently lack the technology to distinguish plastic debris less than 20 microns in diameter, (thinner than human hair) but these particles remains a threat to marine life. Plastic particles may be sinking below the surface and escaping collection.
A more worrying theory and one for which there is growing support, is that it is being consumed by marine life. There is also though more plastic accumulating in remote regions of the world such as Antarctica and the deep sea. The authors of the Science study write “we believe that these fragments probably only represent only a small proportion of the microscopic plastic in the environment”. According to a UNEP report, plastic, especially PET bottles make up 80% of all rubbish in the oceans.
Deadly Toxins as Plastic Breaks Down
As well as direct physical effects of entanglement and ingestion, the toxic effects of plastic are harder to identify. There may be an even greater, more hidden threat from the deadly toxins in plastics. Plastic are persistent and can last for hundreds of years in the environment. Science does not yet fully understand how persistent they may be, staying around for a very long time causing damage over decades and even hundreds of years. And there is now another twist to the story of plastic. Research in Japan shows that some ocean borne plastic actually breakdowns faster than we think. And that is not good, say the authors.
It was previously thought that plastics break down at very high temperatures over hundreds of years; it seems that some are breaking down in parts of the ocean at much cooler temperatures, and within a year of being in the water. Plastics are leaching dangerous chemicals into the sea such as Bisphenol A; present in reusable water bottles and aluminium tins, and styrene. BPA is a sinister chemical that interferes with reproduction, and styrene is a suspected carcinogen. Further research suggests that other toxins, such as PCBs and DDE (pesticides) in the sea will cling to plastics and are then transported to marine life through the food chain. Such chemicals interfere with development, immune systems and the reproductive health of animals. There has been concern for many years over their effects on human health.
Increasingly evidence points to the disposable world in which we live; plastic bags, bottles, tops, packaging, and according to MCS annual beach survey; the biggest offenders are beach goers. 300 million tonnes of plastic are used every year, half will be used once and thrown away, more than 1 million plastic bags are used every minute, that's 500 billion a year, and each bag has a working life of 15 minutes. In the US alone, 60 million plastic bottles are thrown away each day. Over last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century together. These are truly staggering statistics and illustrates our dangerous love affair with plastic
Changing The World's Use of Plastic
In March last year Honolulu hosted the 5th international Marine Debris Conference, where delegates from 35 countries came together to discuss the international and growing nature of the issue. The resulting so called Honolulu commitment is meant to encourage a new cross sectoral and international approach. Its key theme was the need to improve waste management. And as well as reducing waste pollution it has economic benefits. Korea, for example, extended its “producer responsibility programme” which has increased the countries recycling rate by 14%. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) estimates that the waste to energy market is estimated at around 20bn USD globally, and predicted to rise 30% over by 2014.
In May 2011 China expanded its ban on shopping bags. According to media statements, free plastic bags will soon be completely banned nationwide following supermarkets that have been forced to charge for bags since 2008. China also banned the production of ultra thin bags, one of the few nations to take such measures so far. Before 2008 three billion plastic bags were being used in China daily.
Other countries around the world are actively working to reduce the use of plastic bags. An estimated 25% of countries now impose plastic bag bans, or restrictions on their use. But this still leaves vast amounts of unnecessary packaging, disposable bottles and all manner of other plastics finding their way into the Ocean each day. Conservation groups say the true environmental impact of plastic and packaging should be reflected in the price. Avoid buying highly packaged products they urge; reuse, recycle when you can and dispose of your plastics.
According to the UK charity, Plastic Oceans, plastic pollution now ranks alongside climate change as one of the biggest issues facing the planet. And to bring this message to the world they have commissioned a major cinema film, directed by a Hong Kong based filmmaker Craig Leeson. Lesson says in a media statement that the film is “a journey that everyone us of has already taken, as we have grown up with modern conveniences such as plastic. It’s about how we have used those conveniences and disposed of them without thinking about the consequences.” And this perhaps is the crux of it, each bag we buy, each empty bottle we throw away, do we know or care where it ends up, and the devastation it will cause to our oceans?
Sarah Curran-Ragan - Sarah Curran Ragan is a Marine Biologist with 20 years experience and has worked in the UK, The Philippines, Tanzania, Indonesia and ...
