Durban North student paddles Dusi for plastic research

DURBAN NORTH resident, Michaela Geytenbeek who took to the uMngeni River to paddled the Dusi Canoe Marathon last weekend was not just tackling the tide, but going against the current to raise awareness about climate change and promote the Neptune Project at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where she is undertaking her Masters degree in Environmental Engineering.

She planned to use a go pro to record hotspots for waste entry along the river while tackling the 120km paddle.

This as a way to contribute to her research on the quantity of plastic waste being captured on the uMngeni River at various litterboooms.

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“At the moment, data is limited and we don’t know what quality of waste is being collected- weather it is plastic or polystyrene or general waste. Engineering offers a platform for innovative solutions, a lot of new solutions that haven’t been thought of before tend to be engineering solutions,” she said.

As pollution plagues KwaZulu-Natal’s rivers, climate change contributes to the plastic problem, said Geytenbeek.

“When it rains more, there are floods and a lot of the informal dump sites that are located along the river bank get washed into the river. The way that the weather is changing is essentially a result of climate change, so if we look at this result, we can determine the effect its having on the waste sector. That will hopefully give us an idea of how the climate is changing,” she said.

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As a canoeist, Geytenbeek has a practical grasp of what is at stake if pollution is not curbed.

“I started paddling about 18 months ago and just loved it. If I’m struggling to work, I come down for a paddle and it revitalises me, but, when you paddle, you paddle past the waste and you see it at ground level,” she said

The broader impact of this river pollution is ‘huge’, warned Geytenbeek.

“Most of the waste that lands up in the oceans comes from the rivers, and we’ve got a huge problem with micro plastics in the oceans which is consumed by fish and makes its way back into the human food chain. Fish also get entangled in plastic. There was a really striking statistic I read recently that there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050,” she said.

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