“SAS launched a campaign to rid British coastlines of mermaid tears, and will continue to build up until factory practice changes.” On June 5th 2009, the release of the British Plastic Federation’s (BPF) Operation Clean Sweep (OCS) guidance manual was a victory on the preventive field. —Commandant Jacques-Yves Cousteau. In Jordan, recreational activities contribute up to 67 percent of the total discharge of marine litter. Children play on the shore of Manila Bay in the Philippines, which is polluted by plastic waste. Plastics are not metabolized subsequent to ingestion since they are polymers. It affects the economies and inhabitants of coastal and waterside communities worldwide. However, as more and more studies on the matter are undergone, unpleasant findings are definitly uncovered. More specifically, a gyre is a large-scale circular feature made up of ocean currents that spiral around a central point, clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. The trash was not that obvious from the sky. This makes simple scooping up of the material risky, more harm than good may be caused. But until we find a new material to replace it, the best thing to do is to cut down on the use of plastics. Thus, the photo degradation of plastic debris makes the matter worse. Annual plastic production has skyrocketed since the early 1950s, reaching 322 million tonnes in 2015. In essence, humans are eating their own waste…” (Dixit Renee Brown, WiredPress).”. Annual plastic production has skyrocketed since the early 1950s, reaching 322 million tonnes in 2015. Around and around, worldwide, at distant seas, or merely bobbing among the waves before washing up ultimately on shore, a daily and ever too common plastic spectacle is unveiled: bottles, plastic bags, fishnets, clothing, lighters, tires, polystyrene, containers, plastics shoes, just a myriad of man-made items, all sharing a common origin: us. Scientists have recently discovered microplastics embedded deep in the Arctic ice. A new kind of material, called oxo-biodegradable plastic, does not just fragment, but is consumed by microorganisms after the additive has reduced the molecular weight. Millions of animals are killed by plastics every year, from birds to fish to other marine organisms. The Eastern Garbage Patch has been studied the most so far, yet it is not and obviously cannot be the only vast oceanic “rubbish dump out there” says Charles Moore. That’s the equivalent of setting five garbage bags full of trash on every foot of coastline around the world. Combined with industrial runoff, that comes to more than three billion liters of waste per day, a quantity well beyond the river’s assimilative capacity. This is why the production of plastic items has increased a lot from the past few decades. Other emerging hotspots include the oil-boom coasts of the Caspian and the littoral states of Iran and Azerbaijan. What is proven, as we’ve seen supra, is that plastic does soak up pollutants, acting as toxic-sponge for man-made toxins present in the ocean, thus accumulating pollutants such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and heavy metals at concentrations up to 1 million times higher than in ocean water (Moore et al, 2001). All sea creatures, from the largest to the microscopic organisms are, at one point or another, swallowing the seawater soup instilled with toxic chemicals from plastic decomposition. Anything that looks like shrimp,” Moore says. Much of ocean’s life is in the microscopic size range and zooplankton is the base of the food chain. Most of the plastic trash in the oceans, Earth’s last sink, flows from land. We’ve also seen a shift away from the production of durable plastic, and towards plastics that are meant to be thrown away after a single use. The North Pacific gyre has given birth to two large masses of ever-accumulating plastic debris, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, collectively called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GGP). But it’s an area of many hundreds of miles, perhaps thousands, in which the ocean currents tend to bring it together,” according to Robert Knox, deputy director for research at the Scripps Institution. 1 The current bring-your-own-bag movement at retail stores and supermarkets is a good start in terms of refusing, he notes. Straining ocean waters for plastics would capture the plankton that is the base of the marine food web and responsible for 50 percent of the photosynthesis on Earth. Biodegradable plastics have been considered as a future, sustainable option to curb our voracious demand and consumption of plastic material as known in its current form. The ducks (with a distinctive logo on their base) have been sighted in the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans (Ebbesmeyer, 2003). The authors found that higher bisphenol A levels were significantly associated with heart diseases, diabetes, and abnormally high levels of certain liver enzymes. Once at sea, sunlight, wind, and wave action break down plastic waste into small particles, often less than one-fifth of an inch across. The previous year, the city of San Francisco banned plastic bags altogether, at least the flimsy ones of yore. They reported that small plastic pellets called “mermaids tears”, which are the result of industry and domestic plastic waste, have indeed spread across the world’s seas. Cigarette filters and cigar tips, fishing line, rope and gear, baby diapers and nappies, six-pack rings, beverage bottles and cans, disposable syringes, tires, the litany of plastic litter is as varied as the products available in the global marketplace, but it all shares a common origin. These approaches, whilst well-intentioned, will be quickly absorbed by the growth of global plastics production. We just turn it into one toxic form to another. In 2015 global plastic’s production grew by 3.4% compared to 2014. A similar Barcelona Convention exists to protect the Mediterranean Sea. It’s been reported by Greenpeace that an estimated 70 percent of the mass of fragmented plastic present in the open oceans of the world does sink to the deep-sea bed. A plastic-poison has undeniably been instilled by us, prompting an unwilling and illegitimate confrontation of two titans: one synthetic (plastic), the other oceanic. China’s plastics recycling industry is poorly regulated, with scandals such as biohazard plastic waste being melted and reprocessed into consumer goods. He veered from the usual sea route taking a shortcut across the edge of the North Pacific Ocean. Once plastic debris enters the water, it becomes one of the most pervasive problems because of plastic’s inherent properties: buoyancy, durability (slow photo degradation), propensity to absorb waterborne pollutants, its ability to get fragmented in microscopic pieces, and more importantly, its proven possibility to decompose, leaching toxic Bisphenol A (BPA) and other toxins in the seawater.

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