PLASTIC SOUPS

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POISONS -  Tests done in 2004 concluded that 93% of people in the US aged six plus had evidence of BPA in their system. That is fourteen years ago. What about now?

Around 79% of the plastic waste ever created is still in our environment. We are leaving a legacy of plastic waste on our planet that will take nearly 50 years for our children to put right according to a published estimate. From its invention in 1907, plastic and plastic-derived chemicals have worked their way into the rungs of every food chain on Planet Earth.

WHAT IS PLASTIC SOUP

The plastic soup in our oceans is made up of many different types of plastic like: ABS, polythene, polystyrene, PVC, polypropylene and PET. The particle sizes of these various popular (not for fish or marine mammals) plastics add variety of texture and color to the mix just like any good soup in a restaurant. The plastic is mixed with marine fauna and flora to make it more interest nutrition wise and you will be drinking in these particles and toxins as surely as if mum had made you a bowl of it fresh from the Great Garbage Patch. Yummy!

Marine litter or marine debris is a threat to the ocean that is gaining some attention in recent years, from media, NGOs, business entrepreneurs as well as policy makers.

It is increasingly recognised that the damage to the ocean ecosystems also creates risks to social and economic systems for humans on land. There is an urgent need for a wide range of policies to keep plastic and its value in the economy and out of the ocean. The responses so far are far from what will be required.

The new political focus on the circular economy offers a window of opportunity to encourage:

1.  Upstream measures such as product design and multiuse products, 

2. Consumer measures such as awareness and pricing to steer purchasing and waste disposal habits, and

3. Downstream measures such as collection and recycling.

PLASTIC IS ALL AROUND US

Plastic is literally everywhere in your home, our shops, offices and factories. If you look around where you are now – we bet you can find at least 1 plastic object in your view. But have you ever really stopped to think of the implications of plastic, or what our "plastic fantastic" lives are doing to the world?

Now imagine the ocean. All you see is waves of water, the glorious sky and basking sunshine. The world is good, but beneath the waves it is not so good. Billions of tiny plastic particles have turned the life giving water that envelope planet earth by 72% into a toxic slurry, instead of the staff of life.

Plastic is all around our sea creatures, the only difference being that they did not ask us to do this to them. Whereas, humans love surrounding themselves with plastic. We use it to brush our teeth. We touch it when typing an email at work or using a smartphone. We carry our groceries home in it. When we open our fridges, cupboards, and bathroom cabinets - there it is – plastic.

PLASTIC FACTS

1. Imagine Russia made of plastic

Our plastic waste has created a gigantic “plastic soup” in the Pacific of up to 15 million square kilometers - almost the size of Russia.

2.  It’s getting bigger

Over the next 10 years, the plastic soup could double in size. At this speed, the plastic grows as much as 8 football fields every second.

3. What is plastic soup?

The plastic soup consists mainly of plastic bottles and caps, and, above all, of plastic bags. A good argument for recycling and using bio-degradable bags.

4. A spicy soup

In the plastic soup there are 60 pounds of surface plastic to every one pound of plankton.

5. Every piece of plastic ever produced is still in existence today

Plastic is made from propylene, a chemical component of petroleum. Petroleum is a material unrecognized by the organisms that normally break down organic matter, which makes plastic one thing – non biodegradable. It can be broken down into smaller pieces (microplastics), it can be changed into different forms, but it can’t disappear completely. So that sweet wrapper or kids toy packaging you threw away on your 4th birthday? It still exists today.

6. In the past 10 years we’ve used more plastic than in the last 50 combined

Plastic only came into mass production in the 1950’s, yet in the last 10 years we’ve used more of it than in the last 50 years combined – how crazy is that?

7. Around 8 million tonnes of plastic ends up in the ocean each year

The effects of plastic in the ocean are pretty devastating. Around 1 million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals die each year from ingesting plastic, getting trapped in fishing nets, and mistaking floating objects like plastic bags for food. Plastic can also get broken down in the ocean into tiny particles called micro plastics, which marine mammals like fish mistake for food.

8. Enough plastic is thrown away every year to circle the earth four times

It’s estimated that 33-50% of plastic gets used just once, and is then thrown away. In the US alone, 30 million tonnes of plastic is disposed of each year, ending up in landfill or worse, in the ocean.

9. Around 500 billion plastic bags are produced annually

This figure is literally bonkers. It’s estimated that on average we use a plastic bag for just 12 minutes, yet it takes around 1000 years to eventually disappear. Australian’s alone use roughly 3.92 billion plastic bags every single year. Tied together, that’s enough to circle the world 24 times.

10. Plastic can be found on every beach in the world.

Microplastics are found at 5,000 metres depth, and plastic bottles have been found at depths of 3,500 metres. It’s actually ‘raining’ plastic in the ocean. Scientists are still far from mapping all the plastic pollution in the oceans.

AMAZON -  Plastic soup mugs are being sold on Amazon. We wonder if they are condoning the mess we are making, or if this is just confused marketing. Whatever it is, it is more plastic in the mix. Don't use plastic for your soups, use proper ceramic mugs. If you must use plastic for the convenience it offers, for goodness sake get a few years out of it and dispose of it thoughtfully.

More and more people are recycling but we still only reuse 58% of our plastic bottles – that's a 42% gap. Plastic bottles are accepted for recycling by 99% of local councils in the UK. What about councils in Africa and Asia. We only recycle 32% of the plastic pots, tubs and trays we buy. Is that a good example to developing nations?

All of this adds up to plastic being needlessly burned or dumped in landfill every year. Some of that plastic ends up polluting our environment regardless of burying the awful truth.

One million years from now, geologists exploring our planet’s concrete-coated crust will uncover strange signs of civilisations past. “Look at this,” one will exclaim, cracking open a rock to reveal a thin black disc covered in tiny ridges. “It’s a fossil from the Plasticene age.” Not quite as good as Planet of the Apes, but still the demise of a civilization.

Our addiction to plastics, combined with a reticence to recycle, means the stuff is already leaving its mark on our planet’s geology. Of the 300 million tonnes of plastics produced annually, about a third is chucked away soon after use. Much is buried in landfill where it will probably remain, but a huge amount ends up in the oceans. “All the plastics that have ever been made are already enough to wrap the whole world in plastic film,” palaeobiologist Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester, UK, recently told a conference in Berlin, Germany. It sounds enough to asphyxiate the planet.

The United States throws out 25 billion plastic water bottles each year; a ‘patch’ of plastic garbage twice the size of Texas now swirls in the center of the Pacific Ocean. From its invention in 1907, plastic and plastic-derived chemicals have worked their way into the rungs of every food chain on Earth. Plastic might be the newest nutrient in the planet’s ecosystems, but so far, nature has yet to find a use for it. The only sensible way to think of plastic is as a raw Next Nature material, waiting for its balancing counterpart to evolve. We only have time: the average plastic bag will linger for your great grandchildren to clean up 1,000 years from now.

CAPTAIN CHARLES MOORE

It was a gigantic stroke of luck that in 1997, Californian sailor, Charles Moore, was heading home from a sailing race in Hawaii and decided to take a shortcut across the edge of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. This is a region avoided by seafarers so largely ignored. It was here that Captain Moore came upon an enormous stretch of floating debris that is the mix of macro and micro particles that make up the massive plastic soup at the heart of the Pacific that we are mostly aware of now. Thanks to Charles and his inquisitiveness.

GYRES - The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of Texas. If you’ve never heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, do a quick Google search – what you’ll find will appall you. Most of the plastic that doesn’t end up in landfill eventually finds its way out to sea, where it then gets picked up by ocean currents, or ‘gyres’. These gyres form giant floating masses, or ocean garbage patches, creating what’s known as ‘plastic soup’. There are 5 of these garbage patches throughout the world, the most famous of which is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the North Pacific Ocean.

8 MILLION TONS -  Every minute the equivalent of one full garbage truck of plastic trash is dumped in the sea. That is 1440 trucks for every day and 8 billion kilograms of plastic hell for marine life every year.

NON DEGRADABLE - “Most plastics don’t biodegrade in any meaningful sense, so the plastic waste humans have generated could be with us for hundreds or even thousands of years,” said co-author Jenna Jambeck. “Our estimates underscore the need to think critically about the materials we use and our waste management practices.”

“There are areas where plastics are indispensable, such as the medical industry,” said co-author Kara Lavender Law. “But I do think we need to take a careful look at our use of plastics and ask if it makes sense.” The study appears in the journal Science Advances.

The swirling pile of trash in the Pacific Ocean Gyre is growing at an exponential rate. A recent study has estimated that the mass of the garbage island is four to sixteen times bigger than previously thought, and is now three times the size of France.