We bought a dozen free range eggs from the local farmer’s market this week and the vendor was proudly advertising that the egg carton was manufactured using plastics retrieved from the ocean. Sounds good. So I thought I would check to see how the efforts to remove plastics from the ocean are progressing and what is happening to the plastics that are retrieved.
Plastic waste has been widely known to have accumulated in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as well as in smaller quantities all around the globe, but another serious issue is microplastics, higher density plastics and composite plastics that sink to the ocean floor and are near impossible to retrieve.
Plastic waste is now being retrieved by many organisations including coastal cleaning individuals and small groups bureo and ocean going custom designed ship based surface vacuum systems The Ocean Clean Up.
Plastic waste retrieved takes the form of discarded fishing nets, the ubiquitous plastic bottle (Coca Cola is the world’s largest contributor to ocean plastic waste), plastic bags and any other plastic product known to man that has managed to float to the surface or beach.
Plastic waste is not all the same. As is the case on land, plastic items use 1 of 7 official categories of plastic (with some categories containing many subcategories). They often cannot be effectively recycled together. With ocean plastics often tumbled and mixed together, sun degraded and containing sea water, the recycling task is more difficult than on land.
Plastic bottles are made from category 1 PET plastic, which is arguably the easiest to recycle. For this reason, and the fact that plastic bottles often float together and form large yields of waste, PET bottles have been the feedstock for many ocean plastic products. “rPET” has been used in clothing for Polo Ralph Lauren and shoes for Adidas, showing support from global organisations, and the egg farmer we bought our eggs from this week. Old Chilean fishing nets are being used by environmental fabric innovator, Patagonia, in their clothing range and Trek Bicycles are using the recycled nets in bike parts. Look out also for office chairs that may smell like the beach.
Many grass roots organisations and governments are working hard now to slow the flow of plastics into the ocean.
With about 8 million new tonnes of plastic waste ending up in the ocean annually, the Ellen Macarthur Foundation has estimated that the mass of the plastics in the ocean by the year 2050 (which is coming faster than we thought) will be greater than the mass of all fish in the ocean. A terrible thought but thankfully one that some dedicated people are working to avoid.
コメント