The plastic we use unthinkingly every day is killing our planet – and slowly but surely killing us
As researchers, we have been shocked to find the most remote
depths of the Pacific Ocean polluted by our plastic. And it will outlive us
all. Another bottle. Yet another one. We are 200km from land, in
the middle of the South
Pacific, and this is the third bottle we’ve found already this morning. Every-where is plastic. The plastic we use unthinkingly every single day, the
plastic we throw away without a moment’s thought, it lives on, and on. Out
here. Where it is killing our planet, killing
our sea life, and, slowly but surely, killing
us.
I am here as part of a team of researchers from the
University of the South Pacific collecting seawater samples far removed from
any human habitation. My goal is to compare offshore concentrations of
microplastics with those closer to shore. My hope is to put in place another
piece in the Pacific puzzle. We have a fair idea as to the scale of the problem along
more populous coastlines. Yet we know very little here. A knowledge gap that
spans half the surface of the planet.
The work is the brainchild of the late Dr Marta Ferreira and
to date we have found microplastics in seawater, freshwater, in fish, crabs,
molluscs and birds, in sediment from all over Fiji. Every place we visit, be it a metropolitan city, or a far
distant, remote island, we find what we are looking for. Two out of three fish collected from the greater Suva
inshore environment were found to contain micro-plastics. One fish was found to
contain an astounding 68 particles. The degree of ingestion by these common inshore species is
of the same order of magnitude as those found in China. Cognisant that in the South Pacific, fish constitutes more
than double the global average of animal protein consumption, this is alarming. Levels of microplastics in seawater from around Suva were
comparable to parts of the Mediterranean.
Coastal sediments are swamped with microplastics to the same
degree as those reported along the shores of Singapore and Portugal. We are discovering that the very plastics we use to preserve
our food are the same ones that are contaminating it. Polyethylene. The most
widely used plastic on land is everywhere in the water too. In 2017 alone, Fiji imported more than 2,000 tonnes of
polyethylene....
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/16/the-plastic-we-use-unthinkingly-every-day-is-killing-our-planet-and-slowly-but-surely-killing-usStart-up devours pollution with new plastic recycling method
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