by Pauline Beades – Irish Seal Sanctuary
With debates raging about the need for adequate disposal facilities for rubbish – incinerator versus landfill – the question of marine rubbish remains largely unexamined. Plastic dominates our marine world. Albatross chicks, the size of geese, have been found dead, their stomachs full of plastic bottle tops.
An area described as twice the size of the US has been identified in the Pacific Ocean, thick with rubbish. The area, which stretches from 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan, was discovered by an American oceanographer in 1997 and is now known as the Pacific Plastic Soup, the Trash Vortex and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Plastic is getting into the food chain in ways that we never would have imagined. The tiniest of fish has been discovered to have particles of plastic in its stomach. Plastic does not break down; it simply breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces. It gets into the most unusual creatures and it is wreaking havoc on our environment. According to the Earth Policy Institute (EPI), approximately 1,500 plastic bottles end up as rubbish every second.
Do bananas, oranges and onions really need to be packed in plastic? Do our weekly magazines really need fine plastic bags covering them? We all have to take a step toward cleaning up our world for our children; they will be left with the legacy of our excesses.