Ocean plastic could outweigh fish by 2050
If we don't get a handle of plastic which ends up dumped in our oceans, KZN could be facing dire consequences.
Plastic rubbish will outweigh fish in the oceans by 2050 unless drastic action is undertaken to recycle the material, warned a recent report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
An overwhelming 95% of plastic packaging worth up to R1.8-trillion a year is lost to the economy after a single use, said the study.
This is frightening news for a coastal province like KwaZulu-Natal which relies on its beautiful beaches to attract holidaymakers to the region. After torrential downpours earlier in the month, KZN beaches were awash with tons of garbage, much of it plastic, which washed down after river mouths breached.
Fortunately currents deposited the majority of the garbage onto beaches and municipal workers and residents worked desperately to bag the garbage and stack the bags above the high water mark to stop it being washed back into the ocean.
“According to many credible organisations, plastic pollution is a huge problem for the oceans, ocean life and a potential problem for people who eat ocean food,” said KZN ocean information specialist, Rolf Collins.
According to Collins, there are four persistent organic pollutants, DDT, PAH, HCH and PCBs, that are attracted to virgin polypropylene and polyethylene plastic pellets in the oceans.
Plastic constitutes 90% of all trash floating in the world’s oceans.
“Strangely, you find virgin plastic pellets on beaches across the world – they travel in amazing ways. DDT, which is supposed to have been banned after Rachel Carston’s book ‘Silent Spring’ many years ago, is still used to spray huts to kill mosquitoes in northern Zululand and further north. Polycarbonate plastic contains bisphenol A, which is toxic. There are plastics that bio-degrade by bacterial decomposition, but as I understand it, most plastic in the oceans are degraded by sunlight and this takes many years.”
The oceans and their inhabitants have a huge trash problem, followed by humans who have a looming problem in the contamination of ocean food.
In the Pacific Ocean, the North Pacific subtropical gyre – a slowly moving, clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents – has accumulated millions of tons of plastic. It’s the largest landfill in the world, which floats in the middle of the ocean.
“Current estimates of fish biomass in the oceans is around 1,000-million tons and of course there is debate about this, but this is a number that is commonly stated,” said Collins. According to National Geographic, around eight million tons of plastic goes into the oceans every year to add to the estimated 150 million tonnes of plastic that already exists.
The Dusi Umgeni Conservation Trust (DUCT) and MACE Labs last week introduced a ground-breaking ‘booms, bins and bags’ project to clean up the Mngeni River. Dr Deborah Robertson-Andersson, the director of MACE Labs, introduced the project that will be able to catch plastic and other debris from oceans and rivers.
It is hoped that the collaboration will serve as a pilot project for wider implementation of the programme. Perhaps in time, KZN’s shores and rivers will benefit from this pilot plan.
Read the full story on Southlands Sun.
