Oceans Threatened By Garbage Waves

With the news in recent weeks that global warming may be happening quicker than anyone had expected, it was only to be expected that further bad news would be on its way. And lo and behold, the latest news on the environment seems to show that things are getting worse on levels other than a climatological one. The latest news is that an increase in irresponsible trash dumping is likely to have a more profound effect than expected on seas already suffering, the effects, of global climate change – and worse yet, this is a worldwide trend. The revelations come from a report by the US-based group Ocean Conservancy that tracks and catalogues what they refer to as “a global snapshot of marine debris”.

The breadth of the action – nearly 400,000 volunteers set to the task, in 104 different locations – has revealed the extent of the problems of irresponsible dumping. On that one day alone last September, nearly seven million pounds of trash was collected from waterways from oceans to lakes, and from rivers to canals. That amounts to the weight of eighteen adult blue whales, and accounts for only what was found on that one day. What it demonstrates is a worrying tendency for humanity to put things where they cannot see them, and hope that they will go away. The only logical outcome of this attitude is a major pollution problem that will have results that so far can only be imagined.

On that single day in September 2008, 11.4 million items of garbage were collected. Included among these were cigarette butts, food containers and plastic bags. Although the latter of these has already come in for some scrutiny and has been targeted by conservation plans – with supermarkets now charging for plastic bags in some place, and offering stronger, re-usable canvas bags at a discount – the rest currently go unnoticed, and are providing a serious concern. The effects of toxins contained within the cigarette butts alone really do not bear thinking about. One other effect of the research was to show exactly which items are causing pollution off the coasts of which nations.

In the Philippines, 11,077 diapers were picked up. Off the coast of Britain, 19,504 fishing nets were found. Across Canada, the major offender appeared to be cigarettes and cigarette butts, with 323,706 showing up. As well as these, straws, beverage bottles and food receptacles were found to be a major source of the problem, which hints at beach parties and similar events carrying much of the burden of blame. The overall outcome of such polluted oceans is damaged marine ecosystems and polluted beaches – affecting more than one major industry very adversely indeed. In respect of this, another International Coastal Cleanup is being arranged by Ocean Conservancy for the 19^th of September, 2009. Again, the focus will be worldwide, with a close eye being kept on what the figures are this time.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 14th, 2009 at 10:05 am and is filed under Global Green. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.