Robin McKie - Plastic now pollutes every corner of Earth
more than 300 million tonnes of plastic is manufactured every year.. From supermarket bags to CDs, man-made waste has
contaminated the entire globe, and become a marker of a new geological epoch
Humans have made enough plastic since the second world war
to coat the Earth entirely in clingfilm, an international study has revealed.
This ability to plaster the planet in plastic is alarming, say scientists – for
it confirms that human activities are now having a pernicious impact on our
world.
The research, published in the journal Anthropocene, shows
that no part of the planet is free of the scourge of plastic waste. Everywhere
is polluted with the remains of water containers, supermarket bags, polystyrene
lumps, compact discs, cigarette filter tips, nylons and other plastics. Some
are in the form of microscopic grains, others in lumps. The impact is often
highly damaging.
“The results came as a real surprise,” said the study’s lead
author, Professor Jan Zalasiewicz, of Leicester University. “We were aware that
humans have been making increasing amounts of different kinds of plastic – from
Bakelite to polyethylene bags to PVC – over the last 70 years, but we had no
idea how far it had travelled round the planet. It turns out not just to have
floated across the oceans, but has sunk to the deepest parts of the sea floor.
This is not a sign that our planet is in a healthy condition either.”
The crucial point about the study’s findings is that the
appearance of plastic should now be considered as a marker for a new epoch.
Zalasiewicz is the chairman of a group of geologists assessing whether or not
humanity’s activities have tipped the planet into a new geological epoch,
called the Anthropocene, which ended the Holocene that began around 12,000
years ago.
Most members of Zalasiewicz’s committee believe the
Anthropocene has begun and this month published a paper in Science in which they argued
that several postwar human activities show our species is altering geology. In
particular, radioactive isotopes released by atom bombs left a powerful signal
in the ground that will tell future civilisations that something strange was
going on.
In addition, increasing carbon dioxide in the oceans, the
massive manufacture of concrete and the widespread use of aluminium were also
highlighted as factors that indicate the birth of the Anthropocene. Lesser
environmental impacts, including the rising use of plastics, were also
mentioned in passing.
But Zalasiewicz argues that the humble plastic bag and
plastic drink container play a far greater role in changing the planet than has
been realised. “Just consider the fish in the sea,” he said. “A vast proportion
of them now have plastic in them. They think it is food and eat it, just as
seabirds feed plastic to their chicks. Then some of it is released as excrement
and ends up sinking on to the seabed. The planet is slowly being covered in
plastic.” In total, more than 300 million tonnes of plastic is manufactured
every year, states the paper, The Geological Cycle of Plastics and Their Use as
a Stratigraphic Indicator of the Anthropocene... Read more:
