Ocean plastic pollution: ‘I wish everything was packaged on a big island’
Author: Vaseline
The planet has struggled to deal with the plastic that permeates all ecosystems. The polymers used in the clothing have been found in the digestive tracts of creatures living in the deepest oceanic gorge on Earth: the Mariana Trench. Only three people have ever been to the bottom, 36,000 feet (11,000 meters) below the surface. This successful scenario of death by plastic is what led the United Nations to prioritize the fight against marine pollution. Although the achievement of political consensus has been slow, the irrefutable evidence of marine pollution has led to many initiatives seeking to reverse the trend, particularly in the seas between California and Hawaii, where the “North Pacific Garbage Patch” floats harmfully in the ocean. A recent article in Nature reports on a study led by oceanographer Laurent Lebreton that analyzes the origin and composition of 6,000 trash samples (1,100 pounds or 500 kilograms) taken from the North Pacific. A team from the Netherlands-based organization Ocean Cleanup found that five countries produced most of the waste: Japan, Taiwan, the United States, South Korea and China (including Hong Kong). In addition, up to 86% of large pieces of plastic floating in litter were items lost or discarded by fishing vessels. Some of the objects on display were over 60 years old. The long lifespan of plastic is another indicator that the world is in the geological epoch of the Anthropocene: the era of major human impact on the earth’s geology and ecosystems.