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World Oceans Day: Saying No To Plastic

Sally Hill | 09.06.10

Yesterday was World Oceans Day, an event that both celebrates the richness, biodiversity and beauty of our world's oceans, and asks us to confront our own complicity in the devastating pollution that threatens them. I wonder: do we love our oceans enough to end our very personal love affair with plastic?

As you read, there is a growing, swirling, apparently indestructible, swarm of plastic in the North Pacific Ocean. What is referred to as 'The Great Pacific Garbage Patch' or sometimes the 'Pacific Trash Vortex', is an area where an extremely high concentration of waste - plastic, chemical sludge and other debris - has been drawn together in the sea.

Reports of its size vary from 'the size of Texas' to 'larger than the continental United States'.

In fact there are over 6 million tonnes of plastic in the North Pacific Gyre and 100 million tonnes worldwide. Nearly every food and household item we buy is made of petroleum plastic and here - front and centre for the world's life-giving marine ecosystems - we have the fall out from the industrialised world.

While the volume of plastic is enormous, much of it cannot be seen without close observation as the plastic has been broken down into small plastic particles or what are known as 'nurdles'. Each 'nurdle', or fleck of partly broken down plastic, attracts and absorb heavy metals, toxins and industrial chemicals hanging around in the ocean. These get ingested by fish, birds, marine life and the pollutants can enter the food chain ready for human consumption.

The Pacific albatross has become an endangered species as they mistake the brightly coloured plastic for food and feeds it to their young. Photographs of dead chicks with bellies filled with fragments of plastic have become a common illustration of the problem.

The responsibility for this monstrous garbage and plastic pollution lies with us. Both the cause and the solution lie in the most mundane corners of our everday lives. The styrofoam packaging that doesn't get a second glance as we throw it in the bin, the bottle top lost at the beach, the wrapper that blows from a garbage truck. Plastic has infiltrated our existence.

While approximately 20% of the rubbish in the Pacific patch is from shipping, fishing and harbours - 80% is the 'out of sight out of mind' by-product of modern consumer society, and consists of thrown away plastic bags, water bottles, toothbrushes, food packaging, toys and tyres.

Captain Charles Moore, who first discovered the garbage patch, believes that a clean-up is impossible. The clean-up cost would be enough to 'bankrupt any country' according to Moore.

There is no hope for the plastic that currently sits in the water, but surely we can eaach take personal decisions not to use or buy plastic and cast it aside so liberally.

We can consider the inappropriate use of plastics in the design and manufacture of products, we can reuse and recycle some plastic and we can make changes in our lives to move toward being waste-free. We can begin to address our society's complete disconnection from where on earth our things come from before we use them, and where on earth they go after we use them.

Our every day behaviours are significant. This is our responsibility and we need to change the way we behave and the way we package most of our products if this planet is to survive. We will be looking at some of those solutions and alternatives in a series of blog posts. If you have views on this too - we would love to hear from you.

Let's continue the spirit of World Oceans Day with a commitment to look at what we use from the Earth and where it goes to - it is a hard habit to break but let's say NO TO PLASTIC!

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pollution, green living, plastic, choice, great pacific garbage patch, consumption, gyre, ocean